Author: John Pearman

Villa came to Anfield as a team in form and scoring goals. They left totally outplayed and lucky they only let in three. VAR tried to interfere with the goals from Szoboszlai and the own goal from Matty Cash, but they found nothing wrong for a change. Mo got the third and it was a comfortable win. So, after what looked three tricky games out of the first four, we go into the pesky international break, with three wins and a draw. So can’t complain too much.

“Just a shit Andy Carroll” is how some describe Darwin Núñez. I’ve always begged to differ. Well, when the self-styled Geordie nation drowned their sorrows in Newky Brown after his two late goals had turned losers into winners, I wonder how many reassessed their opinions? Jürgen described the comeback from a goal down when playing for over an hour with ten men as better than the Barca one. I doubt there’s any chance of the VvD red card being overturned and we’ve still got to cut out the mistakes like the TAA one for the Toon goal.  The three goals we’ve let in this season haven’t been down to the opposition creativity, they’ve been down to mistakes. Jürgen’s substitutions were brave, they were positive, and they delivered. Smash and grab they will call it but I think it was all about our desire.

If anybody went to Anfield and expected Liverpool to go cherry picking they were in for a rude shock. The defending in the first half was awful and it wasn’t because we lacked that defensive midfield player everyone says we need.  For large parts of the game, we lacked an urgency but thankfully we did turn things round before halftime with Diaz and Mo scoring. Albeit Mo was fortune as his penalty was saved but he did net the rebound. Then we were down to 10-men with mac Allister getting sent off on his home debut but soon after Jota gave us breathing space. The new singing Endo cam on but it was hard to evaluate his performance on a less than wondrous show, but we won.

All the big guns were on show at Stamford Bridge. That is, Chelsea’s billionaire owner and John Henry. Liverpool’s billionaire owner.  The game would be played to a backdrop of rumour and counter rumour. There were two players we’d looked like signing and the same two players Chelsea looked like signing, both sitting in the wings somewhere, well out of sight of the preying paparazzi.  It could only happen at when Chelsea play Liverpool couldn’t it?  For our eyes only it was all about the lack of a defensive midfield player, or so they said.  We had eleven players on the pitch, all who, unlike at least one of the rumoured names, wanted to play for Liverpool. And didn’t they play? It was probably as good as an opening day’s fixture as you were going to get.  The first half hour we were brilliant, had a goal ruled out for a marginal offside, Mo hit the woodwork and Diaz put us in front.  Chelsea came back as us, deserved the draw, had a goal chalked off as well.  A fair result and amid the backdrop of the rumour mill, a great game. Oh yeah, Mo had a strop when subbed. It got a mention in despatches.