Lille vs Liverpool: Match Review

Well we lost. Again. It's funny how you'd think that would have begun to hurt less over time, but it's still just as raw. In fairness, anyone who knows Rafa will have known that this match was most likely to end 1-0 one way or the other. That's Rafa away in Europe. In truth it's not a disaster but it's precisely what we didn't need right now.

Starters

Reina - For all their shots, I don't think he had a meaningful save to make all night. Could do nothing about the goal. Perfect free-kick. Somone touchses it and he can do nothing, no one touches it and he can do nothing. Solid as always.

Johnson - It's amazing the impact that he has. I'm so glad that he's back. Was pretty good defensively and made a couple of great runs offensively. Good performance.

Carra - One of his better games this season. Made a real nuisance of himself. Sent the French flying with little more than a breath in their direction.

Agger - Also solid. Had to cope with a lot more pressure than he should have. Our midfield is just not working and our back two are the ones who are suffering for that.

Insua - Struggled to contain their nameless number 10 (or at least I can't remember it right now), but at the same time he put in some great challenges and blocked of a lot of their important passes. More good than bad. Offensively good as always. He's really consistent in that respect. His yellow card was actually a brilliant tackle that shouldn;t have even been a foul.

Masch - Did what he does best. Tackled everything that moved. Good solid Masch performance.

Lucas - I'm afraid this is where it all boils down. His passing was pretty woeful again today. Masch and Lucas pass to one another a lot, but most of the mforward balls come from the back four. That is just wrong. We don;t need him for his tackling, we need passing prowess. Where the hell was Aquilani!?

Kuyt - Much better than Wigan, but still nothing special. He's faded on the right. Whatever he had has gone. Wish we could have played Maxi. Glad he went off, but his replacement left me stupified.

Gerrard - Had some great moments but they were intersperced with long periods of anonimity. Gerrard and Torres are supposed to work off one another, and it's just not happening at the moment.

Babel - Our most threatening player by miles! That 1-2-3-4-5 with Torres was fantastic and deserved a goal (I'm still not convinced about Babel's composure). His second shot was better and also deserved a goal. Sadly both found the keeper with surgical precision. Don't think anyone understands why he went off. The whole team became flat immediately after he left. My man of the match by miles.

Torres - Still not sharp, but was left isolated for long stretches of the game. Showed his obvious quality when he did get the ball though. Funny how Torres clearly lacks match fitness yet he's out there every game, while Aquilani sits on the bench because he doesn;t have any either. Come on, Rafa! Grow up and play the man!

Subs

Riera - Not terrible but definitely not as good as Babel was. Therefore it was a bad sub. The only plausible reason for him to come off is that he was tired, but he didn;t look it to me.

El Zhar - Can't remember him touching the ball. So El Zhar in the dying minutes is less of a risk than, say, Aquilani or Pachecco? Come off it.

I must say that Rafa got this one wrong. We went in with the typical Rafa-away-in-Europe strategy of "make sure that we don't do badly away so that we can win the tie at home". Worked for some of the big guns (ie Real Madrid) but Lille did not deserve that much respect. This is a game that we should have blown them away.

Now I know that confidence was probably low after the Wigan debacle, but the best way to remedy that would have been to show the world that it was a one off and destroy our next opponents. Instead, we stuck to the old plan and ended up with nothing except more questions to answer, more bad headlines, and less confidence.

Rafa said in his post match interview that he was proud of the desire and effort that the players put in, and I agree with him there. The players were definitely much more in the game than they were against Wigan, and in that regard it was a good reply. But the fact is that we have lost two games in a row, and are precariously close to dropping out of touch with both of our current lowly goals (ie top four and the Europa League trophy). This has been a really harrowing season to be a Liverpool supporter, and I hope that we do not see anything similar for a very, very long time.