March started off with a tricky league trip to St Marys and a strong Southampton team who as of writing are the only team to get an away league win at Anfield this season. A solid performance saw us secure a 0-3 result which also saw us leapfrog Manchester City and Arsenal (albeit City have two games in hand and we're ahead of the Arse on goal difference) to go second. Of note were Suarez breaking his recent dry spell, Sterling scoring moments after coming on and a collective performance from our defence giving us our first clean sheet since January.
02/03/14
This day saw Manchester City win the League Cup with a 3-1 win over Sunderland. Sunderland fan and Liverpool midfield machine Jordan Henderson took a trip to Wembley incognito donning a coat and disguising himself as a southerner to support his team and was routinely snapped and plastered all over twitter.
Best stick to football Jordan and leave undercover espionage to Jack Bauer.
03/03/14
Today saw John Henry say Luis Suarez did have a £40m buy out clause in his previous contract but decided not to sell him after Arsenal bid the required amount and a £1.00 extra. There you have it ladies & gentle readers the man has business balls of steel and I'm starting to see what Linda sees in him.
05/03/14
The international fixtures passed along without much incident for Liverpool players, of note was Daniel Sturridge scoring a late goal to lift spirits for former short lived Liverpool manager now plying his trade as Saxon manager Roy Hodgson but by and large it was a quiet international week for our lads.
10/03/14
Saw a bored media with not a lot to talk about dig up the old "Pepe Reina wants a return to Liverpool" story. I don't know about you but to me it feels like the media have dug this up every day there's been nothing to write about this season. In short Brendan Rogers appears to be of the opinion "Pepe made it clear he wants a move when he penned that letter to the fans." While Pepe Reina says "I have two years left on my contract, Liverpool got another keeper and told me they were happy to loan me for a season." Lets be honest, its a non story Pepe will either come back or he wont. Either way we have Ming the Merciless in goal at present, lets back him and whatever happens close season happens.
14/03/14
Daniel Sturridge hit the headlines again winning the player of the month award for February with five goals, two assists and teaching Skrtel to moonwalk.
16/03/14
At the half way point of the month saw rare sight of a football match take place in the much anticipated trip to Old Trafford. An awesome performance saw the red men come away with 3 points, silence the legion of Utd sycophants and give them a damn good thrashing. Rarely have I seen us play so well, we worked as a unit, hunted in packs, killed their play and played our own sexy brand of attacking football. Captain fantastic Gerrard put away two penalties as Utd threw in desperate challenge after desperate challenge conceding free kicks and penalties aplenty. Suarez's constant attacking runs saw him grab the third goal of the match when our sterling defence saw Utd reduced to desperate poor tackling, yet we just kept going.
The end result saw us firmly solidified in the top four with nine points separating us from Spurs in fifth. But more importantly its left us with dreams of what could be, all this blogger will say is we're rapidly approaching the end of the season and we're definitely in with a chance.
20/03/14
Today sadly saw our much loved former manager Rafael Benitez and on loan keeper Pepe Reina go out of the Europa league as Napoli drew 2-2 at home with Porto and went out 2-3 on aggregate.
22/03/14
Another away trip saw us make another trip to the South coast, the Welsh one as opposed to the English one which is tougher because its further North. A fantastic attacking match saw Cardiff take the lead with an early goal - it looked at this stage with a goal and early yellow for Gerrard that we could be in trouble. Suarez would equalise but thanks to two more goals including from Skrtel the first half would end 2-2.
An all out attacking second half would see Suarez net another hat trick, Sturridge get on the score sheet after setting up a goal and Skrtel get a second. Cardiff would grab a late goal with the match ending 3-6, I for one am absolutely loving our play at the moment and am still daring to dream.
26/03/14
After a month that included a few potentially tricky away games Liverpool returned to Anfield hosting Sunderland who brought their bus with them and were determined to park it. With Sunderland playing five at the back including former red Andrea Dossena - I beg your pardon did someone say Andrea Dossena?
Swiftly moving back to the subject - Sunderland were determined to infuriate and get away with a 0-0. However they made the mistake of pulling down Suarez giving Gerrard the chance to stick a free kick in the corner five minutes before the break. A quick restart saw Sturridge curl a shot into the net from open play within a few minutes, everything was looking good and he looked home and and hosed. Sunderland however had other plans, on the hour they took Wickham & Giaccherini off replacing them with Ki & Johnson, took the handbrake off and started to actually play some football. Ki himself scored on the 76th, Sunderland sent wave after wave of attack from that point and were very unlucky not to get an equaliser, sadly bar Johnson our defence started crumbling and our midfielders were unable to keep the ball let alone get it out of our half. Liverpool would hold onto the lead and get the three points, however this was a tense affair and what I would call a "proper" football match.
29/03/14
There was no game for us today but it proved to be a pivotal day none the less as both our title rivals Chelsea and Man City had games. Chelsea away at Crystal Palace saw Tony Pulises Barmy Army come away with a 1-0 win thanks to a John Terry own goal where as thanks to a cracking second half display from Arsenal Man City came away with a 1-1 draw and two points dropped. This left us in the position of possibly going top if we can beat Spurs tomorrow.
30/03/14
What a game, I'm going into every match at the moment full of tension and coming away on top of the world. We absolutely killed Spurs today, the first goal came in the second minute as Johnson darted down the wing and put in a cross that Younes Kaboul stuck into his own net. One nill up within minutes! Suarez would dart through the Spurs defence and score the second with a deft touch putting us 2-0 up at half time. We were all over them and the Spurs players looked like they had no clue how to cope. Even worse was the manager Time Sherwood who was sat in the stands seemingly having a breakdown as he refused to take a spot in the dug out. Countinho would go on to score a third with a similar goal to Suarez and a few minutes after Gerrard went off Jordan Henderson would step up to take a free kick and in what felt a symbolic moment score - I'm saying this now Henderson will be our captain in the future. At the other end we thought hard to keep our clean sheet, despite our dominance Spurs had a lot of chances with a save from Mingolet the Merciless and an epic block from Skrtel being the highlights of our defence. As Raheem Stirling put it in his post match comments "Everyone's working their bollo - er their socks off." Needless to say this result put us top giving a distinctive red tint to the table.
Barclays Premier League Table
| Team Statistics | Position | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | Last 10 gamesresults | MatchStatus | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated 1 hour ago | |||||||||||||||||
| 1 | Liverpool | 32 | 22 | 5 | 5 | 88 | 39 | 49 | 71 |
| Report | ||||||
| 2 | Chelsea | 32 | 21 | 6 | 5 | 62 | 24 | 38 | 69 |
| Report | ||||||
| 3 | Man City | 30 | 21 | 4 | 5 | 80 | 28 | 52 | 67 |
| Report | ||||||
| 4 | Arsenal | 32 | 19 | 7 | 6 | 56 | 37 | 19 | 64 |
| Report | ||||||
| 5 | Everton | 31 | 17 | 9 | 5 | 49 | 31 | 18 | 60 |
| Report | ||||||
| 6 | Tottenham | 32 | 17 | 5 | 10 | 40 | 44 | -4 | 56 |
| Report | ||||||
| 7 | Man Utd | 32 | 16 | 6 | 10 | 52 | 38 | 14 | 54 |
| Report | ||||||
| 8 | Southampton | 32 | 13 | 9 | 10 | 49 | 40 | 9 | 48 |
| Report | ||||||
| 9 | Newcastle | 32 | 14 | 4 | 14 | 38 | 47 | -9 | 46 |
| Report | ||||||
| 10 | Stoke | 32 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 37 | 45 | -8 | 40 |
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| 11 | West Ham | 31 | 9 | 7 | 15 | 34 | 41 | -7 | 34 |
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| 12 | Aston Villa | 31 | 9 | 7 | 15 | 34 | 46 | -12 | 34 |
| Report | ||||||
| 13 | Swansea | 32 | 8 | 9 | 15 | 45 | 48 | -3 | 33 |
| Report | ||||||
| 14 | Hull | 32 | 9 | 6 | 17 | 33 | 40 | -7 | 33 |
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| 15 | Norwich | 32 | 8 | 8 | 16 | 26 | 51 | -25 | 32 |
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| 16 | Crystal Palace | 31 | 9 | 4 | 18 | 20 | 39 | -19 | 31 |
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| 17 | West Brom | 31 | 5 | 14 | 12 | 36 | 48 | -12 | 29 |
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| 18 | Cardiff | 32 | 6 | 8 | 18 | 29 | 61 | -32 | 26 |
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| 19 | Sunderland | 29 | 6 | 7 | 16 | 27 | 46 | -19 | 25 |
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| 20 | Fulham | 32 | 7 | 3 | 22 | 31 | 73 | -42 | 24 |
| Report | ||||||
31/03/14
Today the jury to take part in the inquest over the deaths of the 96 who lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. The jury are expected to be sworn in on Tuesday 01/04/14, to quote Jenni Hicks of the Hillsborough Family Support Group "Its been a long time coming." Additionally to the inquest there will be two separate enquiries the first being Operation Resolve is a criminal investigation into events leading up to the disaster as well as the disaster itself and the Independent Police Complaints Commission is looking into potential charges relating to Police misconduct involved in the tragedy.
