Monday, April 02, 2007

Crouch Classic

I have seen the light. On Saturday I was privilaged to witness the power and the glory that was the Peter Crouch show at Anfield. The Sunday Times said that he "played like Marco Van Bastin" and they weren't far off. As the losing manager said:

"He was superb," said Wenger. "Everything he did was intelligent. He has the size of a basketball player but the skill of a real football player. If you had put a real basketball player in, Kolo and Gallas would have had no problem."

It was a classic hat trick in the classic sense. A right foot near post strike in the first half, a towering heading, and a superb individual effort for the winner which was the pick of the bunch. Everything he did turned to gold and he could have had a couple more. In form like this he is unstoppable. Hopefully he'll be able to keep it up for the rest of the Premiership and the Champions league.

He wasn't the only star performer though. Mascherano, Pennant and Aurelio all had very good matches. Gonzalez put in some quality crosses. I think that the 4231 formation gave Pennant and Gonzalez room and liscence to move forward and support Crouch. I'm hopeing that the two of them can push on and make up for poor starts to the season.

PSV tomorrow night won't be a walkover. Koeman is no mug and has a couple of impressive results against English teams with Benfica and now PSV. We tend not to do as well when we're billed as favourites. But the fact that Alex and Kone are out injured should help. An away goal or two would make it a lot easier at Anfield.

Ron Deco rang me on Thursday afternoon to say that he had two tickets for me which was amazing. It was great to know that they were sorted and we weren't going over not knowing if we were going to get into Anfield or not. Our tickets were for the main stand, on the left side, near the Anfield road end, where the Away fans sit. This meant that we got to hear all of the banter between the fans. It was all good natured and quite entertaining when chants were composed and exchanged. My Dad is an Arsneal fan but I think he was happy that Liverpool won, for me. The last time we went to a game Chelsea hammered us 4-1 at Anfield. Needless to say, I wasn't on great form after that. This time I was much happier after the game. Here's a picture that I took with my phone. The resolution isn't great but you can get an idea of what a privilage it is to sit at Anfield.

4 comments:

Linda said...

What a result for Liverpool. Go on, catch Chelsea. That would make my year.

Good luck against PSV!

Mal said...

Great result and possibly the best performance that we've put on this season. Crouch was outstanding.

I'm fairly confident that we'll be able to beat PSV given that they're missing their best players. Could be a poor match tonight with them putting eleven men behind the ball. Wouldn't be surprised with a 0-0.

Anonymous said...

Lovely weather, lovely game - I was pretty envious, but really glad it all worked out for ya this time... Mascherano is on flying form, and Aurelio and Gonzales were threatening to fulfill their potential. Pity Aurelio was injured last night... I was worried about a frustrating nil-nil aswell. Well done Finnan!

Mal said...

Great game. I had a brilliant day in the Anfield sunshine. Will do a blog about PSV tonight.