is the highlight.
It highlights how the game went.
Missing a bunch of main players to begin with – van der Vaart, Lennon and Sandro – followed by the news that the beast at the back Kaboul would now be missing and to top it all ‘Arry’s flight up from London was cancelled. It didn’t look good.
And when things finally kicked off it didn’t look that good either. Lacklustre start with the intention from the very off to leave with a point, nick three if possible.
The bright spark of the first half Spurs wise was a combination of Kranjcar looking like he wanted to try and run things and Livermore putting in another assured performance. He was yet again totally outshining Parker who was just clodhopping around giving away stupid fouls many in a number of dangerous places – i.e. just outside the box.
After all the build up before hand focused on Bale it was a guarantee he would be quiet. Very quiet. Bizarrely, with Liverpool fielding their usual rightback Glen Johnson at leftback it was one time I wanted to see the Welsh winger on the wrong flank. It was screaming out for it, Johnson isn’t that great defending his natural position. Why do they never target a player like that, it was left to Walker with Kranjcar moving inside a lot. Most of the time Walker struggled as Johnson was covered by either Bellamy or Adam.
Another struggler was Adebayor. He just can’t seem to be able to control the ball these days. Though to be fair he was crowded out by at least three players in red most the night. But it’s still a drop in the performance that we all probably expected to come after a blistering start.
It was just a first half lacking in any intent from Spurs.
Intent, funny that when you hear all the discussions about sendings off, was it a red card or should it have been a yellow or was it even a foul the word intent is used a lot. During the second period we saw the side of Bale that pisses off Spurs fans no end, diving. Skrtel didn’t touch him and Bale made the most of it. Skrtel wasn’t impressed, non of us were and Bale was probably lucky he didn’t get more than a yellow for pushing the Liverpool player. But it comes back to that one word, in no way trying to defend Bale’s dive, intent. Skrtel intended to foul Bale. Now if a foul is based on intent does it matter if an actual foul took place?
So that second half panned out much like the first though Liverpool created more chances, brought on their racist rat boy to great acclaim by their faithful, he got booked for kicking Parker in the gut. Saha was introduced to no fanfare and proceeded to underwhelm. It wasn’t probably even a like for like substitution. Oh and Parker was whipping everyone up into a frenzy. Yes he blocked a couple of things but if the ball just hits you when you’ve done nothing it’s not a block or an interception it’s just someone kicking the ball, ineptly straight at you. Bale was booed more and more, this time for having the temerity of being fouled by Skrtel this time round – should have seen red.
All while Spurs didn’t create much and Michael Dawson was becoming the richest man in Scouseland with 35 million quid in his pocket. First half did see one brilliant tackle inside the Spurs box by Dawson on Carroll, world class, Awesome Dawson made us forget Kaboul wasn’t there doing his superman act. It’s just standing next to Ledley isn’t it, brings the best out of any player.
Then Bale had his moment, clean through by a nice ball by Kranjcar, one on one with the ‘keeper and he fluffed it. Just wasn’t his night.
They felt hard done by, was a bit of a park the bus job, especially after the stuffings we’ve handed out to them over the last couple of games. Who knew we’d be disappointed with holding out for a nil-nil at Anfield.
So the cat stole the show…