Bale, Brown Trousers and Burger Sauce
That’s another perfectly good pair of underpants ruined. To be fair, I am still wearing them (got home late…roadworks on the A10…terrible business…nightmare finding something to eat and all) but along with the ruination was another perfectly good win. I’m still not quite sure how, but it was a win nonetheless.
It doesn’t matter how bad you are. When a certain Mr Bale is in the mood, you’ve still got half a chance – as Inter found out not so long ago. Last night was another case in point. Having already come close twice, Gareth skipped and swerved through a forest of outstretched legs, leaving one, two, three, four defenders flailing and floundering in his wake, then skidded it across for Azza to put us in front. Soon after, the Welshman seemed to have put us on easy street with a bit of swirl and a bit of a ricochet from his free kick.
But if anyone was expecting a hammering (and the way we were defending, I certainly wasn’t) then it didn’t come at that end. Because for all the early promise and despite making the kind of start we were enjoying last season, we had the major jitters at the back. I’m not sure what it was – maybe the boys all got together for a bit of a bonding session over a scary movie and a bucket of popcorn the night before – but we were on tenterhooks from about the 10th minute onwards. Clearly, the scary movie had affected the particularly hesitant Gallas more than most. And he’s meant to be the old one.
A two goal lead seems like a two goal deficit (and as we know very well, can easily become one) when you’re as much of a danger to yourself as you are to the other team. Add in Liverpool’s fluid movement and passing (Gerrard in particular) and the likes of Suarez and Sterling dropping into massive pockets of space unattended and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Whichever part of our game functions particularly well in one match, there’s always something else we’re not getting quite right. We’re struggling to get that balance right. With no ability to keep the ball and no positional discipline, we had to survive everything from open goals to penalty appeals to goalmouth melees, sometimes all at once. How Walker (number one) got to Suarez’s shot before it crossed the line and (number two) managed to evade Gallas with his clearance is a mystery even now.
But sadly, we couldn’t avoid that particular eventuality from a very similar situation later on when Azza’s clearance rebounded into the net off Bale’s face. That Bale does like to hog the limelight. There you go boys – have a free one. From a huge bit of luck to a huge bit of bad luck. Not that Liverpool didn’t deserve something to go their way. If they were going to get what they should have got out of the game, it was going to come late enough to be really, really painful. But somehow, it never came. Somehow, thanks to block after block from Daws, Jan and Walker, we kept it out. Sometimes it just goes your way. But it won’t always go our way. We need to get better.
Wait a minute, my jeans weren’t this colour yesterday…..