Well Rafa must have been a happy man last night, what better way for him to celebrate his 100th league game in charge of Liverpool, then a convincing victory over CSKA London.
He has brought great success to our club but there’s no doubt that the greatest weakness of his managerial reign up to now, has been our performances against the “big three”. In 26 games against them in all competitions, we have only won 5. It’s a pretty poor return, but there was no such problems yesterday.
Deadly Dirk got us off to a flying start with a brilliant finish within 5 minutes and before 20 minutes had gone, Pennant put us 2-0 up with a fantastic strike for his first ever goal for the club. Those were the only goals but we created a host of other chances and on another day we could have had 5 or 6. At the other end our defence was rock solid. Pepe hardly had a save to make, chelshit never got a sniff. The 2-0 final scoreline flattered them because we totally outplayed and outclassed them. It was a great performance all round, our best of the season so far.
This was our first league win over chelshit, since Mourinho took charge of them and isn’t it amazing how their “supporters” aren’t singing anymore? Could this be the largest missing persons case, in the history of the state? It’s not that they could ever be accused of doing much singing in the first place, but after each of their previous wins they would flood on here and other Liverpool sites to gloat over their victory. Now it seems that they have completely disappeared, almost as quickly as many of them rushed towards the Anfield exits long before the final whistle of yesterday’s game. Which I suppose only goes to prove that they are the bunch glory hunting scumbags we’ve always known them to be, but I’m not going to waste anymore time mocking the afflicted.
So what does this victory mean for us? Well firstly it puts second spot within our reach. Had we lost I think it may have been beyond us, but winning leaves us just 5 points away and if we can keep this run going, that’s very reachable. As regards the title itself, we may have given ourselves an outside chance but even that is a hell of a leap forward from where we were just a couple of month’s ago. A lot of people are of the opinion that a draw in today’s game between the mancs and the gunners will be the best result for us. However, although I’d welcome a draw if that’s the way it turns out, I believe a win for the gunners would benefit us most in the long run, for a number of reasons.
I think if we are to seriously consider ourselves title contenders, then we’ve got to forget about who’s behind us and put our focus on who’s ahead of us. If we are to win or even go close to winning the title, then we’ve got to win all of our remaining games and the mancs have got to start losing, and the sooner the better. The mancs haven’t really hit a bad patch yet and are playing with confidence. Of course they’ll want to beat the gunners, but a draw would also be a good result for them and would keep their confidence going. A defeat just might dent their confidence a little and just as winning can become a habit, so can losing and it would be nice to be a bit closer to them when we play them in March.
Currently we are 11 points behind them, a draw in today’s match will obviously make it 12. It doesn’t seem like much of a difference but when your chasing down such a large lead, every point is precious and I would prefer if this mountain we have to climb, didn’t get any steeper. I know a win for Arsenal would put them just one point behind us, but as long as they’re behind us its not a problem. I also fancy us to get some revenge for those cup defeats by taking three points off them when they come to Anfield.
Another couple of things in our favour is that as well as going to the Emigrants today and Anfield in March, the mancs also have to go to the Bridge. And all three of our rivals are still involved in the domestic cups and will have to play more games then us. So in terms of the title its all ifs, buts and maybe’s. It’s definitely a long shot, but its better then no shot at all. The only thing we can control is our own games and if we can keep winning those, who knows what might happen?
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