Liverpool 2 Manchester United 0
For the second time in five days, the strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein reverberated around this famous old ground, but this time the Liverpool supporters’ mournful tone gave way to one of euphoric celebration.
On days such as this, when it all comes together, nobody at Liverpool walks alone, least of all Rafael Benítez. The ones who walked alone were in Manchester United shirts: Nemanja Vidic, sent off for the third time in as many encounters against the Merseyside club; Gary Neville, raging against the home crowd from his seat on the bench; Michael Owen, for whom this was hardly the warmest of homecomings; all of them, in fact, as they made their way to the dressing room to face the wrath of Sir Alex Ferguson.
What a difference a goal makes — and what a difference it makes when Liverpool have, in Fernando Torres, a world-class forward who is capable of forcing that kind of breakthrough. Torres was absent through injury when his team suffered the defeats by Sunderland and Lyons that turned an earlier blip into a full-blown crisis, but, after taking a pain-killing injection to his groin before facing the old enemy, he more than made his presence felt yesterday, which was just as well, given that Steven Gerrard was missing through a groin injury of his own.
As Benítez put it afterwards: “Sometimes 80 per cent of Torres can make a difference.” That difference was made in the 65th minute. At that point the game was on a knife edge and Liverpool were still on the critical list. But when Yossi Benayoun stepped infield and threaded a perfect ball behind United’s two central defenders, Torres, leaving Rio Ferdinand in his wake, kept his feet and his head long enough to give Liverpool a lead that they did not dare to let go.
What a player Torres is. Ferguson must rue the day that, after pursuing him for the previous three summers, he passed up the opportunity to sign him in 2007 on the basis that the forward, then at Atlético Madrid, was not composed enough in front of goal. United have won two league titles and reached two Champions League finals since then, but, every time Benítez’s record in the transfer market is cast in an unflattering light against Ferguson’s, that £20.2 million deal is worth considering.
After a week in which his regime has been questioned like never before — although not within the club, where his relationship with the board is infinitely healthier than two years ago — Benítez was entitled to enjoy this. If the nightmare scenario for him was of a winning goal for United from Michael Owen, the player he sold to Real Madrid in one of his first acts as Liverpool manager and then neglected to re-sign this summer, the reality was of a well-earned victory that was embellished in stoppage time by David Ngog, Torres’s inexperienced understudy. That Ngog’s goal was set up by Lucas Leiva, Anfield’s butt of derision, will only have heightened the manager’s satisfaction.
Lucas has personified Liverpool’s problems, struggling to fill the void left by Xabi Alonso’s departure to Real Madrid, but here he embodied their battle to overcome adversity.
He is nobody’s idea of a Brazilian footballer — and how novel a sight it was to see Lucas and Javier Mascherano, Brazil and Argentina internationals respectively, outclassed for a period in the first half by Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes, two Englishmen — but, significantly, he fought harder than anyone in that midfield.
It seemed as if Liverpool wanted victory more. Too many of United’s players failed to engage with the game — Carrick, Ryan Giggs, the infuriating Dimitar Berbatov, even Wayne Rooney to a far lesser extent — whereas Liverpool, with Jamie Carragher, Daniel Agger and Lucas scrapping for every ball, showed a desire to go the extra mile in search of the victory they craved. No, make that the victory they needed.
Ferguson complained afterwards about his team’s lack of penetration. He was brave to do so, since it gave rise to all manner of awkward questions. The dissenting grumbles had been kept to a minimum in the previous 11 matches — ten wins and one draw since that surprise defeat by Burnley in the opening week of the season — but they do not look the same side without Cristiano Ronaldo.
The exception to United’s malaise for much of the game was Vidic, who seemed determined to prove a point after a couple of chastening experiences against Liverpool last season. For the most part, he and Ferdinand handled Torres extremely well, while blocking and intercepting everything else that came their way, but, as the game drifted away from his team, Vidic was harshly booked for a foul on Torres — perhaps the least of several robust challenges to that point — and then sent off in the 89th minute for desperately grappling with Dirk Kuyt as the forward ran clear. Déjà vu.
Ferguson’s complaint was that Liverpool should already have been a man short. He was right. Two minutes earlier Owen, racing on to Rooney’s pass, had got the wrong side of Carragher and was brought down just outside the penalty area. It was, as the rules say, the denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity — leaving aside any discussion of whether the Owen of 2009 would have taken it — but Andre Marriner, who was otherwise excellent, showed only a yellow card for the Liverpool defender.
Liverpool did have a man sent off in stoppage time, with Mascherano picking up a second booking for an absurdly overcommitted challenge on Edwin van der Sar, but, as the clock ticked down, with nails bitten down to the quick, Lucas strode clear and, as the United defence opened up in front of him, he put in Ngog.
The young forward is no Torres, but he, too, kept his nerve and, as he rolled the ball past Van der Sar, the storm over Anfield made way for a golden sky. Crisis over.
Liverpool (4-4-2): J M Reina 6, G Johnson 7, J Carragher 8, D Agger 8, E Insúa 5 - Y Benayoun 7 (sub: M Skrtel, 90min), J Mascherano 6, Lucas Leiva 7, F Aurélio 6 - D Kuyt 6, F Torres 7 (sub: D Ngog, 81). Substitutes not used: D Cavalieri, P Degen, J Spearing, R Babel, A Voronin. Booked: Carragher, Mascherano. Sent off: Mascherano.
Manchester United (4-4-2): E van der Sar 6 - J O’Shea 6, R Ferdinand 6, N Vidic 7, P Evra 6 - L A Valencia 6, M Carrick 5, P Scholes 7 (sub: Nani, 74), R Giggs 5 - W Rooney 6, D Berbatov 5 (sub: M Owen, 74). Substitutes not used: B Foster, G Neville, J Evans, Fábio Da Silva, Anderson. Booked: Vidic, Evra, Berbatov. Sent off: Berbatov.
Referee: A Marriner Attendance: 44,188
by Oliver Kay timesonline.co.uk
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