From around the 50^th minute of this game I was screaming “Why the f**k is Dirk Kuyt on that f**king pitch?” And when I say screaming there was enough vitriol spewing from my lips that on hind-sight I can only put it down to possession by some demonic footballing beast, because what I was saying sure weren’t pretty. For the man who had a little fortuitously got the opener in the Champions League midweek game, sparking the walk in the park it turned out to be, he was offering nothing down the right flank, and if he had knocked that chance in three minutes before Stephen Ireland opened the scoring for City, Liverpool would not to be two down and on the way to their first Premiership lose of the season.

When he struck that winner deep in injury-time, I didn’t know whether to scream, cry or laugh, and with what emotion, because if I was in charge he certainly wouldn’t have been on that pitch. But as it turns out it capped a truly unbelievable game. We all remember the greatest escape of all time in the Champions League Cup final against Milan, or even the one against West Ham in the other cup final or come to think of it against Olympiakos where they needed to score by two clear goals in order to go into the next round of the Champions League. They were all something special and will never be forgotten, but this game here, against a team most financially able to oust them from that top table of English football, this was just sheer bloody amazing.

To come from two down at half time, with Steven Gerrard having one of his most anonymous games for many a while, and seemingly failing after really going for the opposition in the first five minutes to take the game by the scruff of the neck, that certainly has to rank up there in that fine list of comeback achievements.

Riera out on the left flank had a fantastic game bobbing and weaving out there trying to make something happen. But up until the first Torres strike, little could be said of the rest of the team except the back four plus Mascherano and Alonso who all did really admirable jobs in keeping a confident City side to the chances they did. OK, their first goal was all about bad defending, granted. Their second, straight from Garrido’s beautifully struck twenty-odd yard free-kick is just one of those things you can’t do anything about. But up until that lovely move with Arbeola and Gerrard on the right, and the former squaring for the Spanish hit-man, in that first half the team in red were limited to that Kuyt miss, and it was a terrible miss (but what can you expect from someone who hadn’t scored a league goal since last November), a speculative Alonso thirty yard strike and a Riera effort from a tight angle, which really should have been a cross, there really wasn’t much to show for the positive way in which they went about this game. 

With Wright-Phillips in such a rich vein of form and a team beginning to get acquainted to the Brazilian delights of Robinho, this was always going to be a tough ask for the visiting team. But the comeback mounted, albeit aided by the sending off of Zabaleta for the horror tackle on Alonso showed some serious reserves of character. And not for the first time this season. Remember, they were one nil down against Middlesbrough, Man U.and Marseille. I’m not gonna say anything out loud for fear of putting a jinx on anything, but you know what, they showed some bloody balls out there today. Even Dirk Kuyt, despite what I called him during the game.