Liverpool vs. Zenit

worms, he pulled out of that step IMMEDIATELY. are you seriously looking at the same thing i am? running full speed and pull his foot off as fast as it can come, i'm not sure how you can call that "stamping."

He didn't intentionally stomp on the guy. He had already made his step when the guy just happened to fall under it.

Watch this video if this loss was a little too tough on you. Always get me personally.

Absolutely devastated.

Have no other contribution to make

We started with four CM, what was formation!

It looked something like this to me


Enrique was mostly providing the width on the left, with Allen, Gerrard, and Hendo all pressing high all over the pitch.

Alright. have finally sobered up and calmed down.

Jose Enrique. I salute you. The man that never hides, he was a menace all game. an absolute soldier. only if our other fullback performed to his maximum ability that we know he is capable of, we may have gone through. Jose was undoubtedly my MOTM

Lucas Leiva. our 2nd best player of the night. Broke up a lot of their play, and played some delightful forward passes as well. Finally starting to get his form back. What a lovely human being as well

Danny Agger. our 3rd best player of the night. Almost flawless defensively, and his mazy run got us back in game. Needs to work on his heading and shooting though

Luis Suarez. scored 2 fantastic freekicks, never stopped running and pressing, but imo, his touch was off. if Suarez has a Swansea-esque performance, he would have scored 6 himself alone. His dribbling today was off, but he still contributed with 2 goals which shows what a world class player he is

Steven Gerrard. hear of a lion. Ran his bollocks off, shame his bicycle kick was saved, or it would have been Olympiakos mark II. sadly, his set piece delivery was off.

Joe Allen + Jordan Henderson. Both played very well, and imo, we lost the midfield balance when they both went off. Hopefully that goal will help Allen get his confidence back, but I think BR got those subs wrong.

Reina, Carra, Johnson, Downing. All performed relatively okay, but could have been a lot better. Pepe made an amazing save at 3-1, but he made it too easy for Hulk to score, not to mention the miskick. Carra made the big mistake, and Johnson's touch was a tad heavy and hence he couldn't complete as many dribbles as he usually does. Downing put in some great balls in the box, and did a lot of un-noticed defensive work.

Subs:
Assaidi- came on after months and he was very intelligent. didn't lose possession, combined nicely with Jose and Suarez, and should get more game time in the league

Shelvey + Sterling. it's sad to see 2 of our young players who had such a bright start to the season gone off boil to bad. Shelvey's lazy attitude annoyed me. there was one scene where the Zenit defender had the ball and Shelvey was the closest player to him, but he refused to press, and we saw Gerrard running from 20 meters behind to do the pressing. His attitude annoyed me, and it's obvious that he is very out-of-form and confidence and bringing him on for Hendo/Allen was a mistake. Raheem didn't have much time to shine, but he appeared scared of the ball. not as confident as beginning of the season when he'd demand the ball and run at defenses. it's obvious his confidence has been shot. Both these players has had twitter problems in the past week as well. I hope BR manages them carefully, and gets their confidence and form back somehow be it a spell in reserves, a loan spell to championship (since we only have 11 more PL games, and Cou and Sturridge will play, that's a real possibility).

BR: got the starting 11 spot on, but the subs wrong unfortunately. but he is a young manager and that was his first season in Europe and he'll learn from this.

Anfield was fantastic by the way

Nishank wrote:Think BR should have waited, The subs broke our momentum.
Anyways amazing comeback, Sell Shelvey and lets hopefully get Europe at the end of this season.

*bleep* hell.

The club needs to get Shelvey the f*ck out of twitter. He's been getting destroyed on twitter by some fans. He's a confidence player and getting slaughtered on twitter won't help him on bit. The best thing that happened to Raheem was that the club got him to get off twitter and focus on football.

Now for next season Shelvey MUST go out on loan. Cleverly and Wilshere both went out on loan and returned to their teams changed man, we need to do the same with Jonjo. He won't get much game time next season as he's behind Stevie, Hendo, Lucas, Allen, Coutinho, and possibly Suso. We're possibly also looking to bring in another midfielder so it's a MUST to loan him out.

Also remember how Jonjo went out to Blackpool, had an amazing run, and came back absolutely beasting. He needs that again.

I can understand him going on loan, but he should NOT be sold.

I personally don't think he should of came on against Zenit to be honest. Both Henderson and Allen were key in us having the ball and keeping options active and I felt as a whole team performance, we died out when they both came out. We didn't really penetrate enough with them on the bench. I guess Shelvey's more of a threat in terms of shooting between the other two.

Messiah "Aggerswagger" wrote:
No blame on CARRA, he played extremely well outside his error.

Let's be honest here and admit he would get much more stick from 'Pool fans if this wasn't his last season.

Harry Redknapp wrote:
Jose Enrique. I salute you. The man that never hides, he was a menace all game. an absolute soldier. only if our other fullback performed to his maximum ability that we know he is capable of, we may have gone through. Jose was undoubtedly my MOTM

Jose was great. He is both a ball-winner and a clever player with very good passing range and ball control. I would go as far as to suggest that overall this season he has been our most dangerous winger.

Enrique coming back to his best kills off all the speculation about us needing a starting LB. Would still love a good back up that can challenge him but it's not a top priority.

Messiah "Aggerswagger" wrote:Enrique coming back to his best kills off all the speculation about us needing a starting LB. Would still love a good back up that can challenge him but it's not a top priority.

I told you this 7 months ago.

@ Art: GJ has been better over the course of the season.

I still don't rate Enrique tbh,on his day he is a beast but he is way too inconsistent.In fact it was partly his fault that we lost this tie,as he failed to close the ball down on Zenits 2nd goal in the 1st leg.

He's a beast at tackling,fast,strong,good technically but his positioning defensively and offensively is poor and his decision making is poor. Extremely one footed too.

I thought I would be furious, despondent and downbeat from not being able to reach to the next stage but I wasn't. For the first time in years I believed that we could overcome a result and we were fantastically close. What was important from this result was not just to go through, but to salvage the pride that we lost in Leningrad. We showed an inner conflict to win that wasn't shown since the tenure of Kenny and god damn my eyes nearly welled with tears.

It would be near futile talking about individual performances because as a unit we performed very well. Who stood out for me were Agger, Gerrard, and Allen. It was fantastic to see Allen score which will be immense for his lost confidence, seeing Agger put in a wonderful performance, and the privilege of watching Steven Gerrard week after week. Sadly BR's subs decisions failed him when he brought on Sterling and Shelvey to break what was a flowing momentum of positive football. Sterling simply didn't perform to the tactical task while Shelvey, once again wasn't on the same wavelength on his team mates with his lost movement and little contribution. I don't care whatever talent he apparently possesses, it would be great to see him on loan. Downing once again, proved that his influence in larger moments and when the team needs him, is waning and considerably average. I still cannot fathom why he even starts when someone like Assaidi did more then what Stewart did in 3 weeks.

Our goals did in the end come down to 2 brilliant individual pieces from Suarez which must be mentioned along with some terrible defending from Luis Neto yet I'm proud that we put the spirit needed to rectify the original mistakes that were made in Russia. Pride salvaged.

Can anyone do me a huge favor and help me find a gif of Agger's amazing run to win that freekick.

Wasn't able to watch the game, but followed it on twitter and online MBM (yeah... I didn't get too much done during that time).

From my perspective, it was an amazing night and one of our best performances of the season. There are, of course, several what-ifs that do haunt us a little. For instance, what if Carra simply punts that ball into row z. Or, what if we don't allow the second goal in St. Petersburg. Even, what-if we had been given a pen for Hubocan's (?) hand-ball. Most importantly, what if Suarez converts one of the chances in St. Petersburg. Any of those events would have drastically altered the tie and potentially sent us through.

What this team needs to take away from this tie is the resiliency we showed, and the utter domination of a VERY good Zenit side. Think about it. We beat them 3-1 and were arguably far more dominant than they were despite winning by the same margin in St. Petersburg. Moreover, we did it with an understrength side. Sturridge's incisive runs and blistering pace could have been a deciding factor in either leg.

It's never easy to go out on away goals, but we have nothing to be ashamed of in this instance. We made mistakes in the away leg, but so nearly overcame them at home. If we can begin replicating that type of fight and drive on a more regular basis, we'll be a far more dangerous club.