I don’t know what was supposed to be spectacular about the pre-match explosion of lights down at Stamford Bridge because once Liverpool got going everything seemed dull by comparison. I’m a fully paid up, life and honorary member of the cynics club but those first forty-five minutes at Stamford Bridge for the benefit of Friday Night Football had to surely be the best we’ve played away from home in years. We simply outplayed and outclassed Chelsea and scored two quality goals and deserved more. Those of us who were in the hovel that is the Stamford Bridge away end revelled in it all.
It wasn’t any surprise that Chelsea got better in the second half but apart from the goal they scored, we looked pretty comfortable and we more or less matched them in all areas of the pitch.
Back to the first half, that might have been Jordan Henderson’s best 45-minutes in a Liverpool shirt? Sometimes he tries too hard to be like Steven Gerrard, but on Friday he came reasonably close to the real thing. Matip and Lovren are looking like a partnership and Milner even looked a decent full back.
I thought the away support, some who’d spent about seven hours on the Motorways of England was exceptional but the highlight for me was a lone voice. When the nutcase who masks as the Chelsea pitchside announcer wandered round the pitch at halftime with the British Olympians who claimed to be Chelsea fans one of them waved a small Chelsea flag as they went past us. As he did so, the lone voice sang out “Is that your famous plastic flag”?
The cynic tells me there’s another ‘Burnley’ somewhere along the way but for now I’ll enjoy the fruits of a victory inside the gates of Hell.