Liverpool traveled to London yesterday needing a win to get their season well and truly rolling, and despite deserving less than nothing from a match that bottom of the barrel Queens Park Rangers dominated throughout, they left the Capital with all three points and a bump into fifth place. Sometimes, I suppose, you get what you need.
A lack of composure from serial own-goal scorer Richard Dunne following a quickly taken Reds free-kick saw the Irishman divert Raheem Sterling’s low cross past Hoops ‘keeper Alex McCarthy to open the scoring. The hosts were knocking hard on Liverpool’s door all day and there was little surprise when they pulled level through Eduardo Vargas when he smashed home a knock-down from Charlie Austin. A 1-1 draw looked to be a good result for either side, but the calamity that followed no one could have predicted.
To be fair, QPR should have gone into the break with a convincing first half lead. Up to the point where Dunne opened the scoring at the wrong end of the pitch, Harry Rednapp’s side were absolutely dominate with the Reds unable to cope with their direct style of play. The front two of Austin and Bobby Zamora absolutely hammered the visitors fragile back-line and, had they possessed even a modicum of composure more, would have had the match wrapped up by half-time.
Where the hosts dared to venture, Brendan Rodgers charges looked positively pedestrian throughout. Lackluster when they had the opportunity to attack, soft through the middle of the park and downright dreadful at the back, they didn’t even look surprised when Vargas leveled the scores with a mere three minutes left in normal time.
More than happy to hang on for the point, QPR hung back and invited pressure from the Reds — ’cause, let’s be honest, they didn’t look one bit of a threat over the previous 87-minutes. Then, it happened; Sterling, who besides having his cross diverted into the net, was about as inspiring as the rest of the side, kicked off a fine move which saw Steven Gerrard feed substitute Philippe Coutinho whose deflected effort beat a diving McCarthy.
Absolute ecstasy followed, but it lasted only a moment when back up the other end of the pitch, Vargas climbed to beat everyone to a corner kick and his header deflected off Jordan Henderson to dribble over the line as the Chilean striker claimed his second goal, and his second equalizer, of the match.
Logic was out the window at this point and it quickly flew off into the distance when Coutinho, largely culpable for the first equalizer when his needless foul gave away the free-kick that created mayhem at the back, slipped through Sterling who saw his ball across the face of goal for an on-rushing Mario Balotelli hit Steven Caulker and, for the second time today, force an own-goal.
That’s that — what else is there to say? We were crap. A huge, steamy pile of crap, but in the end that didn’t matter. We didn’t give up, we didn’t retreat into our shell, we didn’t put our heads down and let our crappiness sink in. We transcended the stank and came out three points to the better.
That was way more than we deserved and that’s enough for me.
–Steven
