Chelsea vs Liverpool Post Match Thread

[RedReet]

thought fabio was actually going to get one at the end there.

I was surprised Kuyt didn't take on the shot himself, but it was good play in the end from both.

I don't know if the extended rest has paid off for Aurelio, but he does look very fit and sharp at the minute. I made the point after Stoke that he looked like he'd been playing every week, not stepping in after X amount of months out injured.

[Qantaga]

Thought id add my own twist

Hahahahaha, that's ****ing genius.

[vonk]

Loads of our fans chucked stuff onto the pitch, including a bottle, lighters, and loads of Torres shirts, scarves and flags. Quite amusing to see.

Craig, all the other stuff, banners, chants and all is fine, but seriously, chucking stuff on the pitch, amusing? Can't believe you are coming out with that. Never acceptable to throw things on the pitch. Never. Its beneath everything we stand for as fans. I really enjoyed everything about today. The low point was when an object was thrown at Torres. Whatever he has done, no player deserves to have stuff thrown at them. We let ourselves down with that ****.

[Fosterbloke]

Craig, all the other stuff, banners, chants and all is fine, but seriously, chucking stuff on the pitch, amusing? Can't believe you are coming out with that. Never acceptable to throw things on the pitch. Never. Its beneath everything we stand for as fans. I really enjoyed everything about today. The low point was when an object was thrown at Torres. Whatever he has done, no player deserves to have stuff thrown at them. We let ourselves down with that ****.

AGREED. That's the kind of **** Milwall fans do. Who ever threw stuff at Torres should be banned from Anfield.

[vonk]

You are obsessed with Carra and Gerrard Arn. And anyone with even half a brain can see it's because you hold a grudge towards them for their off field antics, which it must be said is still all rumour.

Carra was first class today, as was Agger and Skrtel. You know what you get with Carra. He's a better defender than either Skrtel or Agger, he's also the worst of the three on the ball. He doesn't take any risks and sometimes in football you have to play it a bit risky in order to progress the play.

Carra started on the right of the defence, but who saw the danger and blocked Torres getting a goalbound effort in? Carra did. And that was Torres cutting in from our left, so Carra must have seen that and come all the way across the pitch to block it.

As for Gerrard. He's not the most disciplined player we have, though he was steady as a rock today. But he is the one all the players look to still. The one who makes the team tick, and let's not forget, he was the one who set the goal up today with an amazing cross. He does things that Meireles and Lucas are not capable of.

Well said. Carra had Torres and Drogba in his pocket all game. Where does it say that in the stats. Man of the match and a Liverpool legend.

[SB]

Craig, all the other stuff, banners, chants and all is fine, but seriously, chucking stuff on the pitch, amusing? Can't believe you are coming out with that. Never acceptable to throw things on the pitch. Never. Its beneath everything we stand for as fans. I really enjoyed everything about today. The low point was when an object was thrown at Torres. Whatever he has done, no player deserves to have stuff thrown at them. We let ourselves down with that ****.

[McDermotX]

From red and white

[Bender]

So True Funny How it's True

[Armchairkopite]

Absolutely delighted wiht the win yesterday.

I thought Lucas was unbelievably composed especially for the last 30 minutes,picking the ball up defensively on the edge of the box and dribbling to the halfway line on a few occasions, wow, he has stepped up another level.

Well done Lucas.

[Reece]

Absolutely delighted wiht the win yesterday.

I thought Lucas was unbelievably composed especially for the last 30 minutes,picking the ball up defensively on the edge of the box and dribbling to the halfway line on a few occasions, wow, he has stepped up another level.

Well done Lucas.

Not so long ago we would have just been hacking the ball clear, but by Lucas bringing it out the way he did he relieved so much pressure on our defence late on.

He's boss

[Fosterbloke]

Reminds me of the great German defenders and midfielders who seem to walk it out of defence when the pressure is on. I've never understood why England or Liverpool (recently) couldn't do this. Don't they teach them ball retention these days?

[Shaggy]

Great write up from Oliver Holt

Old romantics rejoice as Torres fails to find any chemistry with new love

By Oliver Holt
Published 23:00 06/02/11

It did not feel right that Chelsea should lose yesterday but there was something sweet about the fact that Fernando Torres did.

The enemy of romance in football found himself on the wrong end of a beating from underdogs who just happen to have won the European Cup and the Champions League five more times than he has.

The £50m striker with the dead soul was beaten by a team fashioned by a manager who has more feeling for his football club than Torres will ever have.

The man who jumped ship because he couldn't wait to start stacking up the trophies with a big club saw the big club defeated by the side he had just deserted.

In the Spain striker's sterile world, upsets like yesterday aren't supposed to happen. But happily for football in general and the Premier League in particular, they do.

When he walked out of the Stamford Bridge tunnel on to the pitch and into his new life yesterday, Torres glanced as casually as he could over at the Shed End to his left.

No romance there, Fernando. You were right about that much.

The Liverpool supporters, who were massed in the corner of the ground, saw him snatching a look at them and gave him the treatment.

They threw the Torres shirts they had once treasured on to the pitch and held up banners they had made specially for his delectation.

"He who betrays will always walk alone," one of them said. Another likened Torres to the blonde actress Margi Clarke. A third reminded Torres of Liverpool's five European Cup and Champions League victories.

That was actually the high point of the Spain striker's afternoon. It went downhill from there. Fast.

No romance for the most expensive player in the history of British football on the pitch, either.

What happened to the law of the ex, the rule that dictates a player lining up against his former club always gets on the scoresheet?

Torres didn't even get close. His first shot as a Chelsea player ended up in Row Z. His second was blocked superbly by Jamie Carragher. His third? There wasn't a third.

In fact, there wasn't anything else at all. Just anonymity. Torres looked like a lost little boy cowed by the intensity and the fury of his former Liverpool teammates.

He had no answer to their passion and their commitment. He was substituted after 65 minutes but it should have been sooner. He was a passenger yesterday.

He will get better, of course. A lot better. He is too good a player to keep labouring like this although the sterility of his performance on his Chelsea debut will fuel the debate about whether his best years are already behind him.

He was not helped by the system that Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti deployed yesterday.

It looked like a selection born of a reluctance to drop either Nicolas Anelka or Didier Drogba but playing all three strikers simply did not work.

Anelka was ineffective in a withdrawn role at the point of the Chelsea diamond and Torres fretted at the margins of the play.

Even if Drogba's power is fading, he will always be the focal point of the Chelsea attack as long as he is selected.

Torres looked like his junior partner yesterday. He looked like a support act. But £50m is an awful lot to pay for a support act.

So Ancelotti has some hard choices to make. He has to make the signing of Torres work and he has to make it work quickly.

That probably means dropping either Drogba or Anelka and playing a more balanced side with Florent Malouda restored to the starting eleven.

And it means doing it quickly. Because Chelsea cannot afford to lose any more opportunities to make up ground on Manchester United if they are to retain even an outside chance of retaining their title.

They have lost seven times now this season, the first time that has happened since the season that brought Claudio Ranieri the sack.

Many more slips like yesterday, in fact, and Tottenham may overtake them in the race for the fourth Champions League place. Liverpool are a threat, too.

Not quite the scenario Torres imagined when he said he was leaving Liverpool for a club on the next level.

It would be wrong to say that Torres's love affair with Chelsea started on the wrong note because Torres does not do love affairs with football clubs.

How about this instead: Torres's strictly temporary financial arrangement with Roman Abramovich did not begin with the step towards personal glory that he was expecting. That will have to do.

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/oliver-holt/Oliver-Holt-s-Chelsea-0-1-Liverpool-verdict-Romantics-rejoice-as-Fernando-Torres-fails-to-find-any-chemistry-with-new-love-article692691.html#ixzz1DGJrWXcf

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[DeanoUK]

Right, finally can post. Was trying to post pictures of the match while I was there but the data network seemed to be down/dodgy.

Great match, Chelsea were pretty dire. Torres completely shackled. Only negative I can draw on is Kuyt. It really comes to light, when you're seeing it in full-view, that his positional play is dire - he never seems to go the right way when someone is booting off a through ball. Nor does he get hold of 4 out of 5 of any long balls that go his way. And as we know, he has a first touch like a one legged monkey.

But shouldn't dwell on that. Support was fantastic - our little pocket of fans were infinitely more vocal than 50,000 Chelsea fans.

I was sitting in the home section - nearly broke my girlfriend's hand when we scored!

[Shaggy]

Thought the complete opposite of Kuyt. His work rate, even by his standards, was astonishing and normally that's something you can appreciate even more when you're at the game, as you get to see all of his running. He never gave Terry a moment's peace.

Nice game to mark your Stamford Bridge debut with though eh.

[DeanoUK]

Sorry can't agree, work rate is over-rated when you do nothing with it when you get it. I suppose I agree with the hustling of Terry though.

As you say, was a great match for my Bridge debut!