In praise of Liverpool defence that held their own against Chelsea
Forget Mancini, forget Chris Hughton - if there was one manager whose life as a manager was hanging by a thread, it was Roy Hodgson of Liverpool.
After making the worst possible start in more than a decade and flirting with relegation as early as they were, Roy Hodgson’s tenure as the manager of Liverpool was under severe threat but the Englishman has remarkably turned things around and from being
a villain has now turned himself into a darling of the Anfield crowd.
Of course he guided Fulham to the brink of European glory but the acid test of his ability was to come at Liverpool and there is no denying the fact that he did not win any admirers with the start that his side made but after 3 back to back wins, he surely
has turned the tide in his favour.
Before the game at Anfield started, the odds were overwhelmingly in favour of Chelsea to inflict another defeat on the Merseyside outfit but what the pundits had forgotten was that Liverpool still boasted a player named Fernando Torres in their ranks, who
has the ability to terrorize the best of defences in the world and has a proven record of doing so.
Last season, he single-handedly humiliated Nemenja Vidic when he guided his side to a league double over their fiercest rivals Manchester United. To bet against the Spaniard in any game is not what a wise man’s thing.
But still, no one had thought that Torres could come up with the goods, for all he was a striker who had forgotten how good he was and was just going through the motions at Liverpool, waiting for some club to come and take him to a better and bigger place.
But, as they say 'form is temporary and class is permanent', Torres silenced his critics emphatically with two mesmeric goals that inflicted only the second defeat over Chelsea this season.
No other team apart from Aston Villa and Manchester City had prevented Carlo Ancelotti’s free scoring men from scoring but last night, Jamie Carragher and Co. defended with their lives to stop the slick Chelsea brigade from finding the back of the net.
Martin Kelly, Paul Konchesky, Jamie Carragher and Martin Skrtel would hardly be the defenders any one would pick to stop the likes of Nicolas Anelka, Didier Drogaba, Florent Malouda and Soloman Kalou from scoring. There is no denying the fact that even the
richest man in the world would not have bet a single penny on the aforementioned back-four to stop the mean goal machine of Chelsea but yet the not-so-experienced backline (apart from Carragher) gave the fiercest strike force in the league a lesson in dogged
defending.
Perhaps, Ancelotti got it wrong when he decided to bench Didier Drogba and led the attack with Nicolas Anelka with Malouda and Kalou supporting him but that should take no credit away from the Liverpool back-four, who in tandem with Lucas Leiva held their
ground firmly and did not give even an inch away to their superior opponents on the night, and that too in circumstances that no one favoured them in.
Such is the nature of football to surprise all and sundry but credit to Liverpool FC for pulling out such a performance from within their ranks to re-instil a belief and faith in their fans that their team can still give the best in the game a torrid time
and fight for the title.
Although, Roy Hodgson suggested last night that he was happy with his side being in the 9th spot in the league but after the performance of last night, no one can count them out from the title race.
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