Wednesday 8th April 2009, 7.45pm @ Anfield
UEFA Champions League
Quarter Final 1st Leg
Liverpool have a mountain to climb after the wheels fell off the chariot that had been built in recent weeks. Despite taking an early lead, Chelsea finally got the measure of Liverpool, in this first leg of the Champions League quarter-final.
Overall Chelsea put in a fine performance and we can have little complaints at the scoreline, even if the officials decisions at times left us somewhat bemused.
Liverpool looked a shadow of their former selves in their quest to land a 6th European title.
The reds started in familiar fashion, straight on the attack, and Kuyt’s chance on the 2 minute mark was deflected by Ivanovic.
On 6 minutes, an Arbeloa cross landed perfectly for Torres who lashed the opener in to send Liverpool 1-0 up.
But the reds straight away took their foot off the pedal. Drogba had a chance to equalise almost immediately but Reina, playing his 50th European Cup game for the reds, was on hand to intervene.
Six minutes before half time Ivanovic headed the equaliser from a Malouda cross.
The second half, kicking towards the Kop, Liverpool’s players simply didn’t turn up.
Carragher did well to clear off the line, and Torres could have done better when he fired over the bar after once again outpacing John Terry.
John Terry then landed a particularly distasteful challenge on Pepe Reina, for which he was handed a yellow, to rule him out of the second leg.
Another set piece and Ivanovic with another headed goal. The reds had given Chelsea far too much time in our own half and conceded countless free kicks and corners unnecessarily.
Less than five minutes had passed before Drogba rubbed salt in to the wounds after dispatching a cross from Malouda.
The reds huffed and puffed in the second half, but the performance failed to match those of recent weeks. With Chelsea still hurting after the reds taking all 6 Premiership points this season, they appeared to simply want to win this more than Liverpool.
As useless and embarrassing as the referee and linesmen were they didn’t change the course of this game. So well played to Chelsea and their fans, although they may want to consider creating their own songs.
Liverpool find themselves 3-1 down at half time in this contest.
Things have been worse. 😉
Teams
Liverpool: Reina, Arbeloa, Carragher, Skrtel, Aurelio (Dossena 75), Kuyt, Lucas (Babel 79), Alonso, Riera (Benayoun 67), Gerrard, Torres.
Subs Not Used: Cavalieri, Hyypia, Agger, Ngog.
Booked: Aurelio.
Goals: Torres 6.
Chelsea: Cech, Ivanovic, Terry, Alex, Ashley Cole, Kalou, Ballack, Essien, Lampard, Malouda, Drogba (Anelka 79).
Subs Not Used: Hilario, Carvalho, Belletti, Mancienne, Mikel, Deco.
Booked: Kalou, Terry.
Goals: Ivanovic 39, 62, Drogba 67.
Att: 42,543
Ref: Claus Bo Larsen (Denmark).
This match – in the forum
Pre-Match Topic
Live In Game Topic
Post Match Comments
El Tel, You say you can`t see Liverpool coming back from 3-1 debacle , Tell that to A.C. Milan. Its half time and we have to score three goals and then win a shoot out, done it before , we can do it again,
Its not going to be easy and having so much attacking football to play we will leave ourselves open at the back, We need everyone on top of thier game and I agree with Imran, we do not need Lucas in the side, I would prefer to see one of the young guns take his place
Liverpool will win …they will make 3 goalsl I know it!
It’s Rafa’s obsession with zonal-marking that was greatly responsible for this terrible result infact Chelsea should have won by a greater margin.
As the likes of Tim Cahill have proved that we’re very vulnerable from corners where i believe the opposition’s players should be marked insread of the area.
Like many other L’pool fans i too insist that Lucas is just a waste of space yet Rafa continues too persisit with him for some unknown reason.More then any other team we depend on one player that is Stevie G but Essein marked him comepletely out of the game.We struggle to score or even create any opportunities without our skipper that remains a major concern for me.
The heart wants to believe that we can score 3 at the Bridge but the head disagree’s!.Chelsea can only throw it away now.
Dd anyone tell our players what a game this was.
To be fair it was one of those nights where every dead ball, every mis-kick ended up at the feet of a chav.
Though think that Rafa needed to change Aurelio and Lucas after 35 minutes – it was blatantly obvious they were not up to it. We simply lost cpntrol of midfield Lucas and Alonso were no match for Ballack and Lampard – no midfield = no chance.
Masch is back for the next tie and really shows how much we need him.
Come on you red men – we have been in worse positions and come out well. Remember a few weeks back at the theatre of ‘wet’ dreams their was no chance we could even consider getting 2 goals – we ended up with 4!!! Gotta believe and gotta go down to the bridge and recreate our famous atmosphere.
Poor performance Liverpool. Too many of the Pool players have been shouting their mouths off recently……..football has a way of bringing you back to earth with a bump……and that bump was last nights lacklustre performance. And to top it Benitez is making noises again about Man Utd…… this will keep him quiet for a while…….
It’s gonna be hard but we can do it – come on you red men!
This is going to be hard but we can do it
Very disapointing. We made the perfect start but then seemed to slacken off. I think becuase we are playing well right now, we felt we could just rely on our form to carry us through and of course the anfield crowd, but we got complacent and Chelsea almost equalised as soon as we’d scored.
Some very complacent and sloppy defending has cost us two goals, but in fairness Chelsea had enough chances to make this an embarrasing scoreline. Clearly Chelsea wanted it far more than we did and this is a concern. We’ve won nothing yet and are still playing catch up in the league, so it’s baffling to think why we’ve become so complacent.
Credit where it’s due though. Chelsea pressed us high up the field and gave us little time to play. This cut the supply to Gerrard, who wasn’t allowed to get into the game, though did look to be carrying an injury. If we can’t get Gerrard into the game to link the midfield and atack then Lucas and Alonso get marooned miles from goal and rely on hitting long hopeful passes in the general direction of Torres.
Our greatest success last night came down the flanks, particularly the right where Arbeloa and Kuyt were great going forward and where our goal came from. Unfortunately Aurelio and Riera didn’t turn up and we lacked any real threat from the left.Hence the disjointed look about our play last night.
Maybe this is a blessing in surprise though, perhaps now we can make the final push for the league. Our squad is stretched as it is and only having one trophy to play for may help us
The result is awesome. The worst I expected was a draw, not such an embrassment.
One thing I have noted is that we are not very good at marking especially when it comes to corner kicks. We do not mark our opponents.
On the other hand, there is need to find other players of similar talents as Torres and Gerrard. More often than not, when these two are not given a chance to move by opponents, our team does not tick. Its high time we created more Gerrards and the Torres’ to avoid embarrassments like 1-3.
This was a very lack lustre performance, and the Blues certainly deserved to win. It seemed that most of our players just didnt want to know. There was not the usual fight and passion of late. Didnt anybody bother to tell our players that they were playing in the semi final of the Champions League? Just pathetic all over the park! Good night Liverpool if you play like this in the second leg, though i cannot even see Liverpool coming back from this debacle. El Tel