Liverpool Beat Derby, Chelsea Lose To Villa

I had to grab two days away in order to wind down after last week’s madness but in between did manage to get to catch the Liverpool and Derby game. Armed with two mobile phones, a Nokia 770 and my laptop, do you think I could get online enough to keep tabs on the game through the Liverpool Access blog? No!

But the important thing is that we beat seven shades out of Derby at Anfield on Saturday. What a game.

I don’t think anyone at all could have predicted a 6-0 victory on Saturday, never mind who the goalscorers were going to be. Listening to the Today FM commentary team, one of them had joked about having Xabi Alonso to score first and Liverpool win 4-0 in a mad bet. Next thing you know its 4-0, but the game doesn’t stop there, Voronin adding a fifth and Torres adding his second and Liverpool’s sixth goal of the game.

It was Xabi Alonso who opened the scoring first for Liverpool, the Spaniard whipping in a savage free kick, possibly intended for the head of Dirk Kuyt but it didn’t really matter as from about 40 yards out the ball found its way under the Derby keeper and into the back of the net (25 minutes). Just before the break, Arbeloa started a great passing move to leave Ryan Babel with the ball just inside the box, the Dutch wonderkid getting the better of two Derby defenders (who fell flat on their backsides in the mixup) to send the keeper the wrong way and lash into the left of the goal with pure style.

Fernando Torres made his mark in the second half thanks firstly to Javier Mascherano, who’s sliding challenge sent the ball straight into Torres’ path, the Spaniard not needing to be asked twice to stick his chance away, tucking the ball low into the right corner for his first of the game.

“A convincing Liverpool romp” is how the BBC commentary team put it with Alonso’s second and Liverpool’s fourth, the Spaniard latching onto a loose ball sent back to him from a hard challenge on Yossi Benayoun in the Derby area, Alonso no problem firing into the bottom right corner to widen the gap. While 4-0 would have done any fan at all, Liverpool weren’t resting. That’s something I love about the team this season, there’s no sign of giving up. Where in previous seasons it would have been “right, we’ve got an early goal, let’s take it handy from here”. Taking it handy was not to be the case and Liverpool went on to score two in about a minute, first coming through Voronin.

The goal was virtually Andriy Voronin’s first touch of the game, Kuyt powering a shot towards the left of the Derby goal only for the parry to fall to the foot of Voronin who had followed the action all the way up to the goal line, making sure the chance wasn’t wasted. Torres looked every bit the seasoned professional in the taking of Liverpool’s sixth. A long pass from Voronin set him free to beat the last Derby defender, tap around the keeper with his left and slot calmly home with his right as the Reds romped all over a broken Derby team.

That, of course, was yesterday. The win put Liverpool top of the table, if only temporarily with Chelsea expected to beat Villa at Villa Park. But no! Not only did Chelsea lose, but Zat Knight scored for Villa and they went on to win 2-0, leaving Liverpool top of the table after four games, level on points (10) with Arsenal and with a game in hand.

Terrific momentum to the start of the season, something which by no means should be dropped or slackened at this stage. Too many times we’ve faltered from the start but we’ve a nice unbeaten run going, lets keep it up!

The most important thing out of the weekend is that we’re now top of the table, somewhere we’ve not been in quite some time!

Popularity: 13% [?]