Liverpool traveled all the way down to Portsmouth today in search of a second win on the trot. Although winning in midweek, the reds still needed to improve their form. And it was hoped the men in red were to build on that against a Portsmouth team that currently foots the Premier League.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be. The Liverpool team put on a performance that speaks volumes of how Liverpools season seems to be panning out. The football was lacking quality. And the already fragile confidence drained as the match went on.
Things were made worse when Mascherano was given a straight red card for a high challenge that was deemed dangerous by the referee, late in the second half. Sometimes when a team goes down to ten men there can be an added boost of grit and determination. But the reds trailed away from the game like a loose cannon and the players heads were down.
Nadir Belhadj took the lead for Portsmouth in the 33rd minute. A poor attempt to clear the ball by Johnson gave the Portsmouth player an opportunity to have a shot shot on target from an acute angle. He blasted the ball with so much venom that Pepe Reina could only stand stunned at his near post.
Portsmouth increased their lead in the second half when Frederic Piquionne volleyed the ball home on 88 minutes.
Although Liverpool had some good possession in the game, as always, you have to make it count. And once again, there was a lack of drive or real creativity from the reds attack.
Steven Gerrard went close late in the second half to get a consolation goal, but his effort went round the wrong side of the post. It would have been too little, too late though.
If Liverpool have any intentions climbing up the league table into the top four, they must improve the football drastically. Because bad performances like todays, will only leave them sliding down the league table. Huge improvement is needed.
just plz buy a another stiker!!!
LIKE DAVID VILLA!!!
hello from venezuela!!! lets go liverpool!!!!! i know we can get a good second round
YNWA….
i was apalled at the performance put in by those players who wore our mighty shirt (apart from carra) and thts sugar coating it! I travelled all the way down to pompy to watch tht! What a waste of my time. Ive never had a bad word to say about rafa until now, i do believe he’s lost his touch at our great club. Im not doubtin he’s a great manager but he really has confused me with his team selections this season. Dossena?! I mean come on! It doesnt take a rocket scientist to realise hes not liverpool quality and many others in our extremely poor squad, unfortunately, fall into tht bracket. I have jst seen on sky sports tht luca toni n pandev are now free agents..im sure many will disagree but i think adding one or even both and getting rid of tht poor excuse of a player voronin will significantly boost our fire power. And i know, b4 some one shoots me down, tht toni has had behavioural issues but theres really no doubtin his record and we do need a striker other than torres capable of striking fear into defences! Jst a view wonder what you all think..hope we beat wolves tho atm who really knows what liverpool will turn up?! Merry christmas n happy new year to all 🙂 lets hope for a better trophy laden 2010
It seem like everyone tired of rafa now,he’s kept promising us&puts out a team that includes players who dont want to put 100% in every game,example dossena,kuyt performance this year suggest he not proud of wearing lfc shirt,my question is why doesnt he play benayoun regularly???now in january rafa must sell aquilani,coz he never plays him,its money wasted!!so he must do the same what he did with keane!im sick &tired of his 4-5-1 formation,it never works,he should play 4-4-2 with torres&ngog up front,gerrard on right,mascherano&aquilani in centre &benayoun on the left,but then our defence just allows opposition teams to score,we need a major overhaul of our defence,carra is old now&slow&gets frustrated too quickly,johnson lacks defensive abilities although he’s great going forward&we lack a genuine left back,insua still young,aurelio&dossena will put in a good performance once in a while&lack consistency,which now paints a bad picture on reina,he is a good keeper,but also i dont understand how his brain works sometimes,very often his getting beaten at the near post without making any effort whatsoever,from all of this i deduce we need firstly new owners with new investors to run lfc properly,coz at present its a disgrace,secondly we need new QUALITY players¬ players are potential future stars& end up like babel&co,thirdly we need a new manager,rafa did his best to take lfc forward, but it seems like he has failed,although we came close last season,i keep on telling people selling alonso was our downfall,coz without him our midfield lacks cohesion&its clearly visible,lucas conceding too many needless fouls in our half,which leads to goals being scored,&lastly we only want players who are proud of wearing lfc shirt to play for lfc,not hypocrites who we have in our squad at present.We are in a shambles coz if gerrard&torres playing like how they played last few games its proof enough that if they are not in form,we play like the way we played against portsmouth the past weekend&a few more performances like that&we’l be fightin relegation nevermind challenging for top honours this year in any competition!!! DIE HARD LFC FAN WHO IS SICK OF RAFAS SILLY TACTICS IN GAMES WE SHOULD BE WINNING WITH EASE&NOT GETTING BEATEN WITH EASE!!!
ohhhhh maann, lfc will not finish top four this season if it continues like this, we are currently 8th in the table, 8 points adrift from the fourth spot, almost all of the influential players are back in the squad except for mascherano. and i’m heavily disappointed that we are not improving/building/recovering our form from time to time. and i would like to see big improvements from liverpool in the next game against wolves. in my opinion, lfc are a team of lacking quality, quality is not there in the squad, we do have some classy players in the squad like gerrard, torres, reina, but its obviously not enough to win the premier league or any other domestic cups.
just take a look at chelsea, quality is there in the team, we can see quality in almost every positions in the 11-men squad. keeper- cech, defence- Terry, carvalho, ashley cole, bosingwa, midlfield- Lampard, Ballack, Deco, Essien, Joe Cole. forwards- Drogba, Anelka, kalou. No doubt chelsea are the best team(in EPL), or high potential team to win the premier league this season.
i hope that liverpool would make a good benefit in this january transfer window, make a bid at the quality players that we know (SILVA, VILLA,……..), not the high potential players FOR THE FUTURE, i hate that seriously, just take a look at babel for example.
next game, LFC 1-1 wolves.
Where are we heading to ????
Its a sad time for us reds and not what we wanted for our xmas build up.
I will still have my xmas Liverpool hat on and will enjoy a bev vy and xmas turkey dinner!
We were very very poor on sat. and I cant see any light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope we get a reason why we arnt puttin the effort in or i will believe we are finished as a top 4 side
We can and will beat Wolves but we must keep on winning???
Just cant see it!
The King
A sad red
THE MIGHTY REDS LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB I will always love my club
Merry Christmas to all of us Reds
I think on this result all the Rafa bashers will be out, and i have to agree that they have a solid complaint, going to the bottom teamof the league we should have put out an attacking team, what does he do? sends out his usual negative line-up, as one of the papers said ‘ Liverpools tactics were sterile’ Grant has not been beaten by Rafa, so he knows how to play us, just cut out the link between Torres and Gerrard ,and it’s end of story, then attack fast and our defence back peddles all the way to the goal line, have your spare man running through and ‘Bingo’ you are one up, then you are two up, we can’t score so wev’e no chance, end of Liverpools season and if Benitez insists in his crazy team selections we will be lucky if we finish above 12th !!!!! What’s the answer?
We’ve been on a slippy slope since Paco went – was Rafa ever any good or was it all down to Paco? Something is drastically wrong & I for one can’t see where the next 3 points are coming from – it’s very very well beating the Mancs, but I can’t see us beating any of the mid table clubs at the moment – meanwhile the gap between us & Aston Villa, Spurs & City keeps growing 🙁
Ummm.. with paco gone we finished 2nd the highest position that Rafa has ever got in the prem. So I think you’re wrong there. Ohh and we won the FA cup without him.
As a staunch Liverpool supporter i now am tired of Benitez’s defensive tactics, this cost us the league last yeary and even worse this year, get rid of the guy before he does any more damage to the club.
Liverpool can’t defend.Agger,Insua and Lucas are just not good enough for the Premier League.Stevie G cannot do it all on his own. I find it sad that Liverpool fans are now accepting of the fact that 4th is the target and we are in the Europa league.What has happened?
Rafa still wont listen to the fans and wont take any chances,choosing a defensive team that cant defend.Surely he should know we are going to leak goals so we need to score alot more up the other end.Play Aqulani for goodness sake, what have we got to lose now.At least lets play some good football.
Another terrible performance by our boys against the bottom side in the league.Few chances created together with Dossena starting the game again leaves us without much hope for forthcoming fixtures.
Man City who are above us in the league today sacked Mark Hughes yet we continue to persist with a loser like Rafa who has no idea and seems to have lost control.I realise that Hughes spent £200 million in the summer but Rafa has not exactly been starved of cash instead wasted it on the likes of Lucas,Dossena,Babel and Riera.What exactly does Rafa have to do to get sacked because at this rate we’re relegation contenders!!!
The two clubs just below us have a game in hand so can leapfrog us leaving us in tenth position in the league… and yes we have spent much more in the market then Fulham and Birmingham so stop making excuses for Rafa who would have been sacked ages back had he been manager of Arsenal,Man City/Utd,Chelsea or even Spurs!.It’s simply shocking how poor we are!
Kuyt,Dossena,Aurelio,Lucas,Riera and Babel are all third rate at best!
It is a disgrace what is going on at LFC. The owners and manager should be frog marched out of Anfield. Between them all they do not have a clue and are ruining our great club. 2 v 0 away to Portsmouth, disgrace. Don’t come on here and talk about net transfer spend and all this crap. The managers transfer record is terrible. He has wasted money time & time again building a team but forgetting about a squad. His ego gets in the way time and time agin also. We are now 13 points off the pace with only half a season gone. Take a lead from Man City and sack the twat. Lets get in somebody with a passion for the club and not a guy who turms every press conference etc to be about himself. I am sick to the teeth with whats going on.
POOR POOR POOR
There is nothing else to say. What are we going to do?
Y.N.W.A
This team is not fit to travel home on the club coach. In the same week that they paid respect to the TRUE Liverpool person they showed in their ” i’LL STILL GET MY MONEY WIN OR LOSE” attitude how little they deserve to play for LFC. To get to Anfield takes me four and a half hours from home. The money I earn a year before any deductions is less then the tax they pay per week from their undeserved wages. No more will I be going to any more games as because of the teams indifference to their fans plus the time and great expense incurred have made it a waste of my time. Bad news I know but there has to be a cut off point somewhere and this squad have shown just what they think of LFC fans.
there is no doubt the red card was a real downer. but the reaction to it was disapointing. no end of errors and a lack of enthusiasm were the other factor. i wont be viewing this game on footy tube because its to painfull to watch,
Its all too much now. Its embarasing. Time for a change in management and personell, or we could find ourselves in real danger.
let’s try another manager?
it was a terrible performance by lfc,its becoming quite evident that we depending too much on gerrard&torres,with noone else prepared to take on that responsibility,which opposition teams have taken note of.was it necessary to change the setup of the team?dossena is a waste&it showed today,aurelio is a much better crosser,why was benayoun not started?i mean correct me if im wrong,he is the best creative mid we have,rafa makin ahabit of benching him,even if he scores goals!where was aquilani?not even on the bench?£20mil wasted???why isnt ngog given more games,he has scored a few goals in the last few games he has started for us??we need players who will put 110% in every game¬ jus 2/3 players,its coming to a time where rafa will have to prove himself,otherwise he has to go,bcoz he baffles to often with team selections&substitutions.he repeatin these mistakes too often&the fans gettin tired of it&waiting for his promises about bringing the epl title to anfield!!!
What a disgrace, no fight, no graft, no heart, no nothing…
where has our liverpool gone ?, who are these cowards who stand in their place and when will this end ?
Iv been up beat as possible during this terrible season but that today was nothing short of pissing on the famous red shirt and laughing in our faces.
I am not overreacting nor am i knee jerking or rafa bashing, or anything of that sort and all i ask is the lads give everything they can to win each game and if luck or other things conspire against us than i can accept that. But what i don’t accept is what i watched today.
Carra apart i watched 10 cowards pretend to play bad football against a resolute but average Portsmouth side (credit to them) who lie at the bottom of the league.
You can all have a go if you want but i stand by my words, these boy’s and at the moment that includes our superstars (or lack there of) are not fit to wear Liverpool Red and nor is rafa fit to manage them ……
ALL OF YOU SORT YOURSELVES OUT AND GROW A SPINE OR WERE DONE FOR. Y.N.W.A.