Normally match reports on this site will be written by someone who actually went to the game, but that's not always possible with European aways. Buying a house means that Euro aways are out of the question for yours truly. Smithy is a student (and therefore poor!), and Steve Horton is about to become a dad, so they're both out of contention as well, meaning that this season you can expect a few 'armchair based' reports on here.
Mind you, the prospecrt of having to listen to Clive Tyldesly and Ron Atkinson is almost enough to make me scrap the whole buying a house thing and use the cash to travel around Europe with the reds. Mind you, if tonight's performance is repeated a couple more times, then this years European adventure will be a very short lived one.
The first half showing was fucking terrible. There's simply no other way to describe it. Still, a look at the team sheet before kick off already had me fearing the worst. All day I'd been predicting a convincing win for us. I was positive we'd turn them over. Why was I so confident? Two words. Michael Owen.
Michael had sat out the game with Bolton because he was being saved for this game. That's what Gerard said anyway. The fact that he didn't play in Spain says that he isn't being 'rested', he's been dropped, and I bet Michael is far from happy about it. Certain Valencia players had made the usually fatal mistake of slagging off Michael in the build up to this game, and the stage was set for the European Footballer of the Year to once again prove the doubters wrong.
Instead he was left kicking his heels on the sidelines. No doubt the Valencia back four (and Ayala in particular) will have been well pleased with that. Nice one Gerard. Had Michael been left out to accommodate man of the moment Milan Baros then that would have softened the blow a bit, but even he couldn't find his way into the team. There'd been a lot of speculation about what the front two would be, but I doubt if anyone had even considered the possibility that neither Owen or Baros would play. What the fuck was that about Gerard? Trying to be clever again?
The selection of Diao at centre half was also something which caused me some concern prior to kick off, but given the lack of other suitable options I wouldn't be too critical of Gerard over that. As I see it, his only other alternative was to partner Djimi with Sami (as he did for the second half), but given what happened against Birmingham I can see why maybe GH didn't want to do that.
However, tonight proved once and for all that Salif is no centre half. He's reckless in his tackling, and his positional play isn't great. But he's a midfielder, so I'm not having a go at him. If he plays crap in midfield, that will be a different matter, but it would be unfair to judge him when he's playing in a strange position.
But even taking the dodgy team selection into account, that still doesn't account for the piss poor first half display. Danny Murphy and Didi Hamann have been our best players this season. In the first half they stank, especially Danny. Stevie G was just as bad, and don't even get me started on Riise.
Valencia fucking battered us. They are known in Spain for being a very dour, defensive side, who won the Spainish league on the back of their miserly defence. They actually scored the fewest goals of any Spanish champions in history! Yet against us they looked like 1970 Brazil for fucks sake!
The only two players who were blameless for that first half were Jerzy and Emile. The rest were all below par. Some were worse than others, and I thought that Carra, Sami and Djimi weren't too bad, but the rest? Awful.
Diouf was terrible, and gave the ball away virtually every time he got it. It was no surprise when he went off at half time. Owen's belated arrival, and the defensive reshuffle which saw Diao leave the field, meant that at least the second half performance was respectable. In fact, we dominated the second half, and had Cheyrou or Murphy managed to convert the chances they had, then who knows what could have happened.
I hadn't give up hope, and could see us getting something the longer it went on, and when Baros was finally brought on to join Owen, Heskey and Cheyrou, I thought we'd really give it a go. Unfortunately, the referee then took centre stage. I don't know who he was, or where he was from, but he was a fucking disgrace. Didi's booking in the first half was ridiculous. It wasn't even a foul. Aimar just jumped in the air and flung himself to the turf. Didi was stood there looking at him in bemusement, yet somehow it was deemed a yellow card offence.
As for the second yellow? I was left speechless. There was NOTHING in that incident at all. Neither player should have been booked, and neither shoud have even been spoken to. Sadly though, this incompetant dickhead decides to make a name for himself at Hamann's expense, and then it really is game over.
I was really looking forward to seeing what kind of an impact Baros would have alongside Owen, but the sending off rendered Baros' arrival pointless, and we were just hoping to get to full time without conceding anymore after that. Even so, there was still time for Michael to beat three defenders before being crudely brought down in the box for what was a cast iron pen. At least had the ref not been a biased twat it would have been.
We may have brought about our own downfall with poor team selction, and a woeful first half performance, but the part the ref played in this can't be overlooked either. He may not have been the reason we lost, but he certainly didn't help. He was a disgrace and the club really should complain about him, as I wouldn't want this prick refereeing us in the future.
In a game when too many players didn't perform, only Emile Heskey stood out. He worked his bollocks off, was desperately unlucky not to score, and was easily our best player on a disappointing night.
The only positive to come out of this is the fact that we have five more games to save ourselves. Valencia will win this group, and in effect, tonight's defeat is somewhat irrelevant. Providing we beat the other teams in the group, Valancia could even win at Anfield and we'd still go through. However, I wasn't as impressed with them as Tyldesley and Atkinson so obviously were, and I felt it was more a case of us making them look good because we were so bad. When we stepped it up in the second half, we had them pinned back for long spells, and I reckon we'll beat them at Anfield. Other than Baraja and Aimar, there's nothing there for us to worry about.
As much as Atkinson pisses me off, Tyldesley is a hell of a lot worse. He was so far up Ayala's arse he could taste the Piella he had for lunch. At one point when a Murphy shot hit an unsuspecting Ayala on the head I thought Tyldesley was going to cream in his kecks. "Ayala this, Ayala that, you can see why Manchester United are so keen on him..." Fuck off you biased manc twat. Hearing these two bellends is almost enough to make you appreciate Andy Gray and Martin Tyler. Almost!
Team: Jerzy Dudek; Jamie Carragher, Salif Diao (Bruno Cheyrou), Sami Hyypia, Djimi Traore; Danny Murphy (Milan Baros), Steven Gerrard, Didi Hamann, John Arne Riise; El Hadji Diouf (Michael Owen), Emile Heskey:
