It's All About Keeping Rafa's Job Alive

Liverpool 2 - Manchester United 0
Scorers
Liverpool: Torres (65), N'Gog (90)

Red Card
Manchester United: Vidic (89)
Liverpool: Mascherano (90)

Team: Van der Sar, Rio, Vidic, Evra, O'Shea, Carrick, Scholes (Nani 74), Giggs, Valencia, Berbatov (Owen 74), Rooney

Let's get this straight, I hate losing to Liverpool. I utterly hate it. Today, the priority is different. It's about keeping the most incompetent manager at his job. It's about keeping the man who most single-handedly keeps Liverpool the 2nd banana, or for most years, the 3rd banana. However hard I may hate losing to the dreaded enemy, keeping that man in employment supercedes it.

Now with that clarification out of the way, we were pretty poor today. Liverpool played like their lives depended on it, and we obliged by giving them a lifeline. They were out of the blocks faster and were hungrier everywhere on the pitch. Had it not been for some fine goalkeeping by Van der Sar, we could very well have been buried at the half.

The second half didn't make matters any easier. A lapse in concentration allowed allowed Torres the time and space to outrun Rio and smash a stunner into Van der Sar's near side. One up to the enemy.

We tried to chase the game but Liverpool hurried and chased us all around the park, making the game extremely difficult to control. Even after replacing the ineffective Scholes and Berbatov did little to improve our chances.

As the game came to a close, both teams were reduced to 10 men in quick succession. First with a crude foul by Vidic on a runaway Kuyt, and subsequently Mascherano on another crude foul on Van der Sar.

We pushed so many men forward that we were caught out by a counter, resulting in N'Gog's break away goal in the dying seconds.

Make no bones about it, even though keeping Benitez employed is a good thing, we were utterly crap. We were out-hustled in every department. We didn't lose this game on skill, but were competely and truely outworked by a team who had everything to lose.

Hope the lads take something from this loss. There are no easy games in the EPL and unless they fight hard for the full 90 minutes, getting outworked like today could be a common occurance. Already we have come close to losing points against teams like Bolton last week and have been outworked by the likes of Burnley and Sunderland.