Steven Gerrard’s penultimate home match of a storied career looked almost certain to end in despair after the skipper missed a chance to send his side ahead from the penalty spot, but a late header from the mercurial captain ensured that he not only left the pitch to a standing ovation, but that his side also retained their outside chance of sneaking into the top four.
Philippe Coutinho, in typical fashion, put the Reds in the drivers seat as the hosts bossed Queens Park Rangers all over the pitch, but they paid dearly after squandering a number of good chances when Leroy Fer volleyed home a Joey Barton corner. Hoops defender Nedum Onuoha was shown a yellow card on either side of Gerrard’s poor spot-kick as the visitors looked to hang on for a much needed point, but the 34-year old got on the end of a well taken Coutinho corner late on to snap the Anfield outfits poor run of form.
With a plane flying a “Rodgers Out, Rafa In” banner over the stadium pre-match, the tone was well and truly set with the hosts stumbling out of the blocks, looking very much like the side that drew with West Bromwich Albion a week ago and lost in spectacular fashion to Hull City midweek — huffing and puffing, but never quite blowing the house down.
That being said, thankfully all we had to do was knock over some ornaments in the garden to take three points from a seriously disorganized QPR side. After enjoying so much of the ball in our last two outings, Chris Ramsey’s boys were a different beast altogether, ignoring the valuable lesson that both Tony Pulis and Steve Bruce taught when their relegation threatened clubs got some joy against us. Instead of just letting us knock the ball around in the less dangerous areas, the Hoops decided to press and harry us in possession and that ended up being a blessing in disguise.
Steven Caulker and Fer both had chances to give the visitors and unlikely lead early on, but when the former Cardiff City defender was caught up field, Raheem Sterling was able to shepherd the ball forward for Rickie Lambert. Spotting Coutinho on the far side, the 33-year old sidefooted a perfect square pass across the box and the Brazilian made no mistake; one touch to settle and a quick look up before he curled a shot just under the bar that left Rangers ‘keeper Rob Green no chance.
From there we should have cruised it — Sterling almost doubled the advantage after latching on to Jordan Henderson’s clever backheel only to be ruled marginally offside, Gerrard’s freekick was well stopped by the Hoops goalie just before the break and on the other side of the half Coutinho found Adam Lallana in space only for the former Southampton captain to shoot wide before Henderson and Sterling combined yet again with the youngster somehow bundling over when it looked far easier to just put the ball in the net.
Lambert, Gerrard and even Dejan Lovren would all come close as Liverpool tried to turn their dominance into goals, but the inevitable would happen not long after the Croatian saw his powerful header turned away by Green. Conceding corner after corner and letting the pressure build, the visitors finally found an equalizer when in a typical bit of lackadaisical marking, Fer was left unmarked to volley home.
I’ll never be able to explain why, but five minutes on, it looked like Rangers defender Onuoha went and blew it with a clear foul on Martin Skrtel as the Slovakian looked to get on the end of a Coutinho corner, pulling the big Slovakian to the ground when he never looked dangerous to begin with. Up stepped Gerrard in front of the Kop as he’d done countless times in the past, but his soft spot-kick was saved by Green to keep the visitors in it and pile an unnecessary amount of misery on the Reds skipper.
The story wasn’t about to end there though as the Captain turned back the clock to write his own ending, getting on the end of yet another of the Brazilian’s sumptuous corner kicks to glance a header past the Rangers shot-stopper — and that’s exactly how you want to remember him, isn’t it? There’s still three matches left so the time to eulogize hasn’t come around quite yet, but if that’s how he signed off of his time at Anfield — once again pulling victory from jaws of the mediocrity — that wouldn’t be too bad at all.
That goal could prove to be much more important than just the three points it secured with Manchester United’s loss later in the day to West Bromwich Albion seeing the Reds pull within touching distance of Louis van Gaal’s side. With only three matches left to play and a trip to Chelsea on the docket for next weekend, it’s borderline ludicrous to even consider the possibility of the Reds pipping them to a Champions League spot, but at this point, we’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Now, that would be a far more Gerrard calibre way to sign-off…
–Steven
