EPL Post Match Report: Liverpool vs. Birmingham by Jon Cheah

After the lackluster performance in Porto, the assembled MyRAWKites in M Bar were hoping for a much improved showing from the boys. Well, the football on display did improve (only ever so slightly) but playing against a team that lacked the conviction to attack; the age-old perception of us not being able to break down “weaker” teams again reared its ugly head. Birmingham is certainly turning into a bogey team for us along with the “other” team down the M62.

Starting lineup selection was not help by injuries and Benayoun’s unavailability due to the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday while Torres’s omission certainly raised a few eyebrows among the faithful. However, the selected partnership upfront of Kuyt and Voronin should have been lethal enough to keep the Brummie defense busy. The midfield lineup remains pretty much the same from the mid-week Euro outing while in defense, Arbeloa was switched to right back and Riise restored to the left.

Steve Bruce must have read a few chapters out of Porto’s tactics: his team was hell bent on crowding us out of the midfield and stopping us from winning the second ball. We hardly had any foray into their penalty box with our rather disjointed attack and were reduced to speculative shots from outside. As usual, we were ineffective from corner set pieces again.

Reds everywhere must be sick of the term “playing between the lines,” because that was what we failed to do. The boys upfront couldn’t find space and ended up running into the same piece of turf (and into each other). The closest we were to scoring, was from Gerrard’s side-footer that was cleared off the line and Voronin’s effort that was saved at full stretch by Taylor. The inclusion of Torres (for Babel) and Crouch (for Voronin) brought much more purpose to our attack; highlighted by Torres’s spectacular scissor kick effort and Crouch’s unchallenged header that went over the bar. However, the mix-up in front of goal involving Crouch and Gerrard with only the keeper to beat really summed up our performance.

As if that was not bad enough, Pennant hobbled off three minutes from full time with what looked like a pulled hamstring and was replace by Finnan. We left M Bar feeling rather disappointed and “blue” after three draws; co-incidentally against teams that play in blue.

Remaining undefeated but dropping points against mid-table teams is not part of the plan in our push for that elusive no. 19. Let’s hope we can shake off the problems we’re having and regain back our confidence and swagger in the Carling Cup tie against Reading on Wednesday morning at 2:45 am, live on channel 80 - Astro SuperSports. It'll be the perfect time to rest most of the jaded first team members and introduce the reserves to the ferocity of the English game; especially with this being a cup tie against a Premiership side.