White Suburban Punk

After the two day trip to Madrid, Liverpool fell, 1-0, after an early goal by Diego Farlan for Atletico Madrid.  He was left completely unmarked in the box on the play.  It would’ve been terrible defending had there actually been any defending at all.  At 18 minutes, Yossi Benayoun appeared to tie the game, but he was ruled offside on a very questionable call.  Replays showed the refs blew it. Those were pretty much the only scoring chances, as Pepe Reina made a couple of quality second half saves, but for the most part, the game was pretty quiet and controlled.  Atletico defended well all game and Liverpool striker David Ngog was horrible — I don’t think he had one effective touch on the ball all game — and he was substituted by Ryan Babel early by Rafa’s standards, in the 64th minute.  As Rafa said after the game, it could’ve been better, but it also could’ve been worse.  The teams play the second leg at Anfield Thursday April 29.

The powers-that-be ruled that Portsmouth will not be allowed to play in the Europa League next season even if they win the FA Cup. This is a penalty for going into administration.  As a result, the seventh place Premiership team will now qualify for the Europa Cup along with fifth and sixth place.  Liverpool now sit in seventh, but they can also qualify by winning the competition this year.  In the other semifinal, Everton and Hamburg drew, 0-0, at Hamburg.  Coincidentally, the final is at Hamburg on May 12, so they will have the opportunity to play it in their home stadium.

Reports from Italy state that Rafa has agreed to become Juventus’ coach next year, but I’ve seen that reports from the Italian media are usually wrong.  Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini stated that he would bid for Fernando Torres if he is made available, and Rafa scoffed at that, stating that Torres is happy at Liverpool and has three years remaining on his contract.  No word yet on a sale of the club.

Photo from ESPN Soccernet

Liverpool defeated West Ham United, 3-0, at Anfield yesterday to keep their slim hopes alive for a top 4 finish and Champions League football next year.  After starting out somewhat lackadaisically with some sloppy play, Yossi Benayoun got Liverpool on the scoreboard at 19 minutes when a Steven Gerrard free kick was steered by his midsection into the goal.  That turned out to be a typical play in the game.  The third goal, which was credited as an own goal by the West Ham keeper, was also a result of poor defending off a free kick, and Liverpool had other chances in similar circumstances.  The second goal was a thing of beauty, however, off lightning quick passing by Yossi Benayoun to Maxi Rodriguez to David Ngog.  Ngog finished nicely after badly blowing a chance early in the game.  The score actually could have been a lot worse, but the referee missed three West Ham hand balls in the penalty box during the game, as well as a couple of takedowns.  All in all, a comfortable win for Liverpool, who now sit in sixth place, five points behind fourth place Tottenham Hotspur. 

The truly great news for Liverpool fans this week was the announcement by owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett that they will sell the team.  Their three years of ownership have been close to disastrous, and the club is clearly heading in the wrong direction.  They promised and failed to deliver on a new stadium and they are universally reviled by the fans.  We should probably wait before being too happy, however, as a delusional Hicks stated in an interview that he believes the value of the club has tripled under his stewardship!  Bewildering.  If that’s his thinking, it could be some time before the Yanks are finally run out of town, even though time is of the essence.  This is a huge summer for the club.

All Liverpool good news this season has been tinged with bad news.  This time, the bitter dose is that Fernando Torres, El Nino, will be out for the rest of the season with knee surgery.  He is expected to be recovered to play for Spain in the World Cup, but even that could be in some jeopardy.

Liverpool’s next match is scheduled for Thursday in Spain against Atletico Madrid in the Europa League semifinals.  Given the flight restrictions in Europe, the team’s trip to this game will be epic.  It’s 2,600 miles, and the team plans to take a train to London and then the Eurostar train to Paris, where they will spend the night.  They will then take another train to Bordeaux and a bus to the airport, where they will jump on a short flight to Madrid, all taking more than 24 hours.  UEFA has dithered badly about whether or not to postpone the match, and the fans who wanted to travel to the game have been screwed as a result.

In the Premiership, this weekend’s games are huge for Liverpool.  They play at Burnley while fourth place Tottenham play at Manchester United and fifth place Manchester City play at Arsenal. 

In the League Championship, Newcastle has clinched the title and will be promoted, and it looks like West Bromwich Albion has also clinched promotion.  There will be four team playoff for the final spot, which right now would be between Nottingham Forest, Cardiff City, Leicester City, and Swansea City, with Blackpool lurking just two points back in seventh place.

Liverpool dominated the game against Fulham at Anfield, but were unable to score, finishing with a 0-0 tie that should just about extinguish any hope of a top 4 finish and Champions League football next season.

Fernando Torres missed the game with a knee injury, and Dirk Kuyt, Lucas, and Yossi Benayoun were all on the bench, although Kuyt and Benayoun came on as substitutes in the second half.  Alberto Aquilani, Ryan Babel, Maxi Rodriguez, and David Ngog got starts.  Babel had a couple of excellent chances, one very early in the game, while Aquilai had three chances of his own in the second half.  Fulham’s goalkeeper, Mark Schwarzer, played a great game and kept Fulham in it.

Liverpool have four games left and they have to depend heavily on the teams above them faltering down the stretch.  Manchester City, Tottenham, Liverpool, and Aston Villa are in 4th through 7th places, respectively.  5th and 6th places are automatic qualifying spots for next year’s Europa League, although Liverpool could also clinch a spot in that competition by winning it this year, since they are in the final four.  Man City and Tottenham both have tough games left, but the gap is probably too wide now.  The summer will be very, very interesting.  Rafa stated in an interview last week that the team needs to spend 60 million pounds this summer to be a legitimate title contender next year.  It’s frustrating, because they were so close last year.  But watching the Clasico Saturday between Barcelona and Real Madrid, I could see the vital role that Xabi Alonso now plays for Real Madrid and what a huge loss he was for Liverpool.

The next game for Liverpool is next Monday against 16th place West Ham United at Anfield on ESPN2.  Then Thursday they play the first leg of the Europa League semifinals at Atletico Madrid.

After losing the first leg in Lisbon, 2-1, Liverpool bounced back in a big way with a sound 4-1 thrashing of Benfica yesterday at Anfield.  Fernando Torres scored two goals, becoming the first Liverpool player to score two goals in four consecutive home games.  Here in the US, I was able to watch the game on Gol TV, who had an American announcer (who actually wasn’t that bad).

The game started out a bit ragged by Liverpool, but the crowd was in full throat and finally, at 28 minutes, Dirk Kuyt scored off a corner that was initially ruled offside, but fortunately the head referee correctly overruled the linesman.  Barely over five minutes later, Lucas went in alone after a tremendous pass by Steven Gerrard, and Liverpool led, 2-0.  However, the players knew that this lead was precarious, and Benfica reinforced the notion by nearly scoring before the end of the half.

Liverpool started the second half extremely aggressively, attacking at every opportunity.  At 59 minutes, goalie Pepe Reina gathered a corner kick and passed it to Javier Mascherano, who got the ball to Yossi Benayoun on a beautiful counterattack.  He passed to Dirk Kuyt, who then sent an incredible cross to Torres for the all important third goal.  Four passes up the length of the field - beautiful.  Of course, this started Benfica diving and hammering Liverpool players.  The color commentator on Gol TV even called one Benfica player “gutless” and said that he should be wearing a dress after a particularly egregious dive in the box.

At 70 minutes, Benfica was awarded an extremely questionable free kick and Oscar Cordozo scored through the wall (Gerrard moved) to make it 3-1. There was another scare soon after on another free kick, but Liverpool escaped that one and Benfica soon got caught too far up, with Torres ending it by going in alone and chipping the ball over the keeper.

It was a very solid performance after the disappointment at Birmingham and the controversy surrounding Torres’ subtitution in that game.  Liverpool will play Torres’ former team, Atletico Madrid, in the two leg semifinal starting in two weeks.  They play Fulham at home in the Premiership Sunday and then next week is when they can hope that Man City and Tottenham start dropping some points.  Tottenham plays Arsenal next Wednesday, Chelsea Saturday, and Man U the Saturday after that.  Man City plays Man U next Saturday and Arsenal in two weeks.

In other Liverpool news, goalie Pepe Reina signed a six year contract extension.  He is undoubtedly one of Rafa Benitez’s best signings, and will be going to South Africa with Spain.

Albert Riera, who was suspended by Liverpool after publicly criticizing Rafa and calling the club a “sinking ship,” had wanted a transfer to a Russian team, where is wife is from.  But the Spartak Moscow coach said that a deal fell through because of Riera’s outrageous salary demands.  What a colossal, delusional idiot.

Photo from Liverpool Echo

More dropped points by Liverpool and now that’s seriously it — they absolutely must win each of their five remaining games to have any hope of finishing in the top four.  Liverpool deserved a better result in this game, especially after essentially dominating the second half.  The first half was rather ho hum, played at a slow pace with few chances either way.  Maxi Rodriguez drilled a shot that was tipped off the crossbar at 35 minutes and Birmingham had a chance a few minutes later, but that was it and it was 0-0 at half.

Steven Gerrard scored on one of his patented blasts a minute into the second half and Liverpool dominated possession after that, but a complete defensive breakdown led to a tie game.  Liam Ridgewell came in wide open, completely unmarked, fielded a cross and deposited it past Pepe Reina, who had no chance.  This kind of mistake has killed the Reds this year.

At 65 minutes, Rafa Benitez replaced a slightly bewildered Fernando Torres with David Ngog.  The cameras caught Gerrard with a confused look and a slight roll of the eyes at this seemingly bizarre move.  Benitez said after the game that Torres was exhausted, which was understandable after the beating he took in Portugal on Thursday.  In fact, the whole team looked exhausted.  Ngog missed two good chances in the last 25 minutes and Maxi also had a couple that were not converted.  Missed opportunities and a colossal mistake equal a draw and just one point.  Liverpool now trail fourth place Manchester City by four points and have played one game more.  Thursday they play Benfica and Sunday Fulham, both at Anfield.

Photo from The Guardian

I have mentioned several times my belief that Liverpool has been unlucky or unfortunate on numerous occasions this season.  I tried to see if there was some way to measure this, and the only obvious one is to use goal differential.

The Pythagorean expectation was invented by the great Bill James for use in baseball to determine a team’s expected winning percentage based on runs scored and runs allowed.  In James’ formula, Win % = (Runs scored)²/(Runs scored)² +(Runs allowed)².

I tried this formula with the Premiership, but the variations were pretty wild from the actual results.  Using a Poisson model, however, yields much a much more accurate picture.  Thus, the formula I used is: (Goals scored/(Goals scored + Goals allowed)) X available points.  Thus, Liverpool has 53 goals scored and 32 goals allowed this season, and has played 32 games.  (53/(53 + 32)) X (32 games X 3 points available) = 53/85 X 96 = 59.85 expected points.  Liverpool have 54 points, so they are 6 points below their expected results.  A negative difference shows how unfortunate a team has been.  Here are the calculations for all the teams in the Premiership:

The formula may underweigh teams at the bottom of the table, as teams ranked #11 – #20 are all negative except Wigan and there are only two positives in the whole league.  But there are five results that register as spot on, and I haven’t been able to find a variation that seems to work any better.  This at least shows that Liverpool has been the most unfortunate team in the top half of the league based on goal differential and expected results, and the statistics follow what the eye sees.  I’ll try to keep thinking of a better way to measure it.

Liverpool lost at Sunderland in October on the infamous “beach ball goal,” when Sunderland’s Darren Bent scored the game’s only goal on a shot that was deflected by a beach ball that had been thrown onto the field.  Subsequent commentary revealed that the goal should have been disallowed, and it marked one of many instances of poor fortune for Liverpool this season.  In the return leg Sunday at Anfield, Liverpool left no chance for bad luck to influence the game.  In perhaps their most dominating performance of the season, Fernando Torres scored two goals and Liverpool cruised to a 3-0 win, which could easily have been at least 6-0 in the first half alone.

Torres got the scoring started just three minutes in on one of the most amazing goals you’ll ever see, an absolutely magical shot that was perfectly placed in the upper corner of the net.  And that was actually Liverpool’s second quality scoring chance, as Daniel Agger just missed in the first minute off a Steven Gerrard free kick.

All game Liverpool dictated the pace with energy and tempo and crisp, authoritative passes.  It was truly beautiful football, and the players themselves looked like they were having loads of fun, as there were smiles all over the field.  At 32 minutes, Glen Johnson made it 2-0 with a deflected left footed blast off a corner kick, and soon after, Torres knocked a shot off the post and then sent the rebound wide, prompting laughter and smiles from his teammates. At 60 minutes, El Nino put the game away when he calmly settled the ball in the box and knocked it into the corner of the goal.  Torres has now scored 7 goals in his last 4 games.  This was a great example of how much talent is actually on this team when they’re all healthy.  I don’t know if they even need four world class players this summer, as Torres says.

Liverpool sit in sixth place, four points behind fourth place Tottenham, who have one game in hand.  The Europa League round of eight starts Thursday at Benfica, and they play at Birmingham City Sunday in the Premiership.

Photo from ESPN Soccernet

I finally got a chance to watch Liverpool defeat Lille, 3-0, to take the two game home and home series, 3-1 on aggregate.  Fernando Torres was fantastic, scoring two goals and creating several more chances.  Of course, the atmosphere was a bit tense at Anfield as the Reds trailed, 1-0 coming into the game.  But Lucas made a quick run into the box early and was hauled down in an easy call for a PK that was converted by Steven Gerrard.  Liverpool made quick, decisive, confident passes throughout the game, but there were still moments of nervousness.  All too often this season Liverpool fans have seen their hearts broken late in games.  Pepe Reina was forced to make a great save in the 33rd minute off an explosive attack, and Lille created some other chances, but Liverpool pretty much carried the play.  Early in the second half, Torres got his first on a long pass from Ryan Babel, who got another start, to make it 2-0.  Of course, with the away goal rule, it was still far from over, and things got a bit awkward for a while, as Liverpool seemed to debate between defending and going for the third goal to put it away.  The crowd was clearly nervous, too, but finally in the 89th minute Dirk Kuyt fed Gerrard, whose shot was saved, but Torres got the rebound to end it.  After this game, Liverpool had scored 7 goals in their last 2 games with Manchester United next.

Diego Maradona was in the crowd.  He was watching his Argentinian players Javier Mascherano and Emilio Insua.  The third Argentinian national that plays for Liverpool, Maxi Rodriguez, is ineligible for European play because he came over in the January transfer window.

The draw for the round of eight in the Europa League took place Friday, and Liverpool drew Benfica, who knocked them out of the Champions League in 2006.  The first leg is Thursday, April 1, in Portugal.  The winner will get the Valencia/Atletico Madrid winner.

Albert Riera was suspended by Liverpool after giving an interview less than 24 hours before the Lille game in which he called the team a “sinking ship.”  He was also whining about playing time.  Great timing, classy guy.  I never liked him, and to me, Ryan Babel is far more effective playing on the left than Riera ever was.  Today’s news is that Riera has been sold to CSKA Moscow for 6 million pounds.  Addition by subtraction, plus they get some money (which better be used on players this summer).  Buh bye, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Liverpool crushed Portsmouth (“the Premiership’s basket case”) at Anfield on Monday, 4-1.  The game was shown in marvelous high definition on ESPN2 here in the states, and they must be complimented for some truly impressive camera work on the replays.  Glen Johnson, Daniel Agger, Alberto Aquilani, Maxi Rodriguez, and Ryan Babel got starts, while Lucas and Dirk Kuyt were left on the bench.  The Anfield crowd was very subdued at the start of the game, which is understandable given the last two games.  The announcers actually mentioned empty seats and it turned out to be the lowest attendance for a Premiership game at Anfield in five years. 

Liverpool was crisp, decisive, and creative right from the start.  Where was this confidence and desire at Lille and Wigan?  I don’t know, but it was great to see.  Hopefully this new-found aggression continues, as every game the rest of the way is essentially a must win now.

After all the strong play to start the game, the first goal was a gift off a giveaway by Portsmouth’s backup goalie scored by Fernando Torres.  Babel scored two minutes later off a pass from Torres, and Aquilani scored his first goal for Liverpool three minutes after that, again off a pass from Torres that Gerrard let through.  Aquilani was fantastic all day, by far his best game.  It’s incredible what he can do when the opposition gives him space to maneuver.  He was confident and aggressive, but it’s still questionable whether he’ll get to play against Manchester United this weekend.

Chances continued through the end of the first half with Liverpool holding the 3-0 lead and continued in the second.  Aquilani beautifully set up Torres’ second goal at 77 minutes and Portsmouth got a late one to avoid the shutout.  How Liverpool possibly lost to these guys in December, I’ll never know.

The one bizarre occurrence on the day was Steven Gerrard throwing a wild forearm at Portsmouth’s Michael Brown at 74 minutes, with Liverpool leading 3-0.  He was immediately replaced by Rafa Benitez and the referee clearly saw it, as he spoke to Gerrard right afterwards.  The FA has since said that no action will be taken against him, but he was pretty fortunate not to get a red card, which would have forced him to miss the tilt at Old Trafford.

In other news, goalie Pepe Reina looks set to sign a contract extension, which is great news.  Fernando Torres said that his future depends on Liverpool aggressively attacking the transfer market this summer, stating that the club needs to recruit “four or five top-class players to compete.”  The only way that will happen is with new ownership, which fans can only pray for.  Speaking of, reports indicate that a 100 million pound investment bid was made by a group out of New York.  It’s expected that if they get new ownership, Rafa will be gone, while Rafa is also supposedly growing increasingly frustrated with Tom Hicks and George Gillett, so if they stay as owners, he may leave voluntarily.  Whatever the truth is, big changes could be on the way.

This is a tough stretch of games for the Reds.  They play the second leg of the Europa League Round of 16 at Anfield vs. Lille on Thursday, trailing 1-0, and then travel to Old Trafford Sunday for the much anticipated tilt with Manyoo.  Liverpool won, 4-1, at Old Trafford last year, but of course finished second to them in the standings.

Photo from ESPN Soccernet

The disaster continues, and it is now possible that Rafa has lost the locker room.  My DVR screwed up, so I could only watch the first half hour of the game.  Lille’s stadium only holds 18,000 but the place was rocking.  They started out really well, too, making Pepe Reina make a save in the first minute.  Liverpool started going forward a bit as the game wore on, with Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel setting up a good shot by Babel that he should’ve done more with.  Torres also had a header that was saved in the first half.  They lost on a free kick in the 85th minute, and now trail going into the second leg.

Lille dominated the possession in the game, 57% to 43%, although at least Liverpool got six shots on goal this time.  Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce poured salt in the wound with comments about how he doesn’t like Rafa and the team won’t make it into the top 4 after the loss to Wigan.  This is one ugly season.  I don’t want to lose Rafa, but maybe it’s the best thing at this point.

Photo from ESPN Soccernet