After the battle royale against Chelsea, we are back to the meat & potatoes of winning championships – a trip to the atmospheric Stadium Of Light against Roy Keane’s newly promoted Black Cats. It was games like these that derailed our previous league campaigns and last season, our boys not only started sluggishly but only managed a measly 18 goals away from home.
So it was imperative we staked our claims early on and Rafa had a chance to steal a march on our rivals with an early kick off. Nearly 50 comrades turned up at Mbar and once again the place was awash in a sea of red and a chorus of Kop anthems. Not least the “We have the best midfield in the world” when Momo Sisoko broke the deadlock in the 37th minute with a rifled shot from the edge of the area. His performance and goal underlined Liverpool’s new strength in depth as he ably stepped into the huge boots of an injured Stevie G.
It was amazingly Momo’s first goal in Red (and Liverpool’s 7000th league goal) and his shot curled at the last moment to swerve past Britain’s most expensive keeper, Graig Gordon (10m sterling pounds) who up to that point had performed heroically to keep the scores level.Prior to that magnificent goal, it had been a tough, physical battle which came to a fore early on when Big Sami Hyppia’s nose was broken by a flailing Sunderland elbow. Captain for the day Jamie Carragher also suffered serious injury later with a broken rib and collapsed lung after a collision with Pepe whilst defending a corner kick. (Luckily, Big Sami is expected to be fit to take his place in the upcoming home fixtures against Toulouse and Derby before an extended international break will allow Carra time to mend.)
Overall, it was tough, tight game and even though we had a better squad man-for-man, Sunderland battled hard, giving our boys little space and even less time to dwell on the ball. But this is where our “superior” quality is supposed to shine through. First up for special mention is Jermaine Pennant who is finally beginning to show the class he once promised as a young gooner. Throughout the game he tirelessly hogged the lines and took on defenders while the quality of his crosses has also improved dramatically.
Our star striker had another good game though he didn’t make the score sheet; linking up well with Voronin the pony-tail as the last gasp goal highlighted. Having received the ball from Babel after some neat pass-and-move football, Torres took his time to tee up Voronin who buried the ball into Gordon's far corner.
Torres had three wonderful chances stopped by the great efforts of the current Scotland no1 who kept the score line respectable. The former Athletico star also showed devastating Rushie-type pace that left the Sunderland defence for dead on numerous occasions and let’s hope he can emulate the moustached one’s great scoring record as well.
In the end, Roy Keane acknowledged his team had been outclassed and they had to accept the result. On a slightly negative note, Babel didn’t have the best of games as he continues his learning process but virtually everyone else rolled up their sleeves for a bit of graft. Another downer was the performance of ref Mark Halsey who showed way too much bias towards the home team though luckily his whistle didn’t lead to a Rob Styles-type fiasco!
But in the end, we were celebrating a hard earned win with even more beer guzzling (plus mandatory rendition of YNWA) and if it keeps on going this way, all us Reds gonna have some big and bulging beer bellies come the end of the season . . .
It’ll be worth it if we do number 19!
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