The CouchExpert

 Mayank Gupta

Football Analyst, The Couch Expert

11 September 2011

Britannia stadium

2009. Stoke City drew with Liverpool depriving us of the 2 crucial points necessary to maintain pressure for the league title.

2010. Stoke City hammer Liverpool after an abject display of football from Liverpool ending their streak of 3 wins on the trot.

2011. Stoke City win against Liverpool due to refereeing decisions and extravagance of Liverpool at the goal.

There seems to be a thorn at ‘The Britannia Stadium’ for Liverpool. No matter how god you play or how bad, something will happen to deprive you of what you deserved.

In  a long time, it seemed appropriate for Liverpool to finish the trip with 3 points. After the first 20 minutes, none could have expected anything else as an outcome. Against the run of play, Stoke City scored from a penalty which should have been a free kick in the first place for the barging of Walters into Carragher.

How many times do we see the whistle blown away when Carroll so much as breathes into a defenders ears at the other end?.However, as Carragher goes down, he wraps his hand around Walters resulting in a penalty kick which the latter eventually converts with the greatest of ease.

After that, it was the 61^st minute drama where Henderson and Adam failed to play in a team and went for glory after glory failing to achieve it in 5 cumulative attempts. The injection of pace with the introduction of Bellamy and the physicality of Carroll proved cumbersome for the Stoke defence but it was never to be.2 penalty claims were not approved from which the second one was as clear handling in the penalty area as daylight.

To gift wrap the performance, Suarez missed a sitter in the injury time.

As dismal as it may sound, the performance was good and to have 24 attempts on goal against Stoke City in ‘The Britannia’ is an achievement in itself. It shows the leaps and bounds LFC have come from an abject season last year.  Many would counter this with a statement for the ability of the Mancs to grind out a win when necessary however, I would rather watch LFC lose with The Liverpool Way than with the antics, theatrics and negativeness of other teams who are desperate to win.

The highlight of the match was the different attitude of ‘The King’ who with his wit has asked the media and the referees to buckle up for their mistakes have cost us 5 points in 4 games already. Nice, to watch him not slating the referee as his compatriots and colleagues do but pleasantly warn them that he could jump the fence if that’s the only manner for them to respect LFC.

Conclusively, it is the lack of mentality in the players to play at places like ‘Britannia’ which cost us the game. As I mentioned in the beginning this was these games which will cost us the top 3 slots. I hope they learn from this how important it is to play and have the fightback mentality that makes a Gerrard tick and Suarez bite.