GUARDIAN – Liverpool v Chelsea – live! | Jacob Steinberg

Minute-by-minute report: Will Chelsea take back third place by beating Liverpool? Join Jacob Steinberg NOW to find out


A news article on 2013-04-21 13:43:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Liverpool v Zenit St Petersburg – live! | Tom Lutz

Minute-by-minute report: Liverpool trail 2-0 going into the Europa League last-32 second leg. Find out if they can pull off a stunning recovery with Tom Lutz


A news article on 2013-02-21 19:00:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Liverpool v Swansea City – live! | Daniel Harris

Minute-by-minute report: Can Liverpool bounce back from their Europa League loss as they take on Brendan Rodgers’s former side? Find out with Daniel Harris


A news article on 2013-02-17 14:31:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Zenit St Petersburg v Liverpool – live! | Rob Bagchi

Minute-by-minute report: Can Liverpool get a first-leg advantage in Russia? Find out with Rob Bagchi


A news article on 2013-02-14 16:32:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Liverpool 0-2 West Bromwich Albion | Premier League match report

This was life before Daniel Sturridge, revisited for Liverpool. They dominated at Anfield, lacked a cutting edge, encountered an opposition goalkeeper in commanding form, and fell to the inevitable late punch as West Bromwich Albion inflicted a second league defeat of the season on Brendan Rodgers.

Late goals from Gareth McAuley and the substitute Romelu Lukaku gave former Liverpool assistant manager Steve Clarke a victorious return to Anfield and Albion their first win of 2013 to leave Rodgers stunned. Liverpool looked set to rue a penalty miss from Steven Gerrard, thwarted by the excellent Ben Foster, but take a point when McAuley rose unmarked to head home Chris Brunt’s corner with nine minutes remaining. In injury time Lukaku burst into the penalty area as Albion counter-attacked and finished low under Jose Reina.

Albion inflicted a sobering 3-0 defeat on Rodgers on his Premier League debut as Liverpool manager, but their respective fortunes have veered in opposite directions since the turn of the year. While Liverpool entered the match having won their three previous home encounters – keeping a clean sheet in each and scoring 12 in total – the visitors had not tasted victory since Boxing Day. Encouraging away performances at Arsenal and Manchester City gave Liverpool added encouragement, yet it was Clarke’s team that made the more composed start, with available personnel having a major influence on the performances of the two sides.

Injury and international duty had deprived Albion of Youssouf Mulumbu since 1 January, and his return alongside the fit-again Claudio Yacob brought much-needed resolve to their central midfield. Despite being allowed back into the fold since going for a drive around west London on transfer deadline day, Peter Odemwingie was not in the match-day squad as Shane Long was asked to lead the line with Romelu Lukaku on the bench.

It was the absence of a Liverpool striker, however, that had the greater bearing on the first half performance. Daniel Sturridge was out with the thigh injury he suffered at City, which had also forced him to miss England’s friendly win over Brazil last week, and the Liverpool display was reminiscent of many that preceded his £12m purchase from Chelsea. Rodgers’ team gradually took control of proceedings and dominated possession without seriously testing Ben Foster in the Albion goal.

Sturridge’s replacement, Jonjo Shelvey, did have the ball in the net inside ten minutes but was correctly adjudged offside as he waited to pounce on Foster’s save from a Glen Johnson shot from the edge of the area. Steven Gerrard went close from distance, the dangerous Stewart Downing hit the side-netting via a deflection off Chris Brunt, and Mulumbu scrambled clear when Luis Suarez flicked a low cross goalwards, but Albion appeared content to keep Liverpool at arm’s length. Their biggest scare arrived moments before the interval when Steven Reid made a hash of clearing Shelvey’s cross and sliced the ball inches over his own crossbar. Agger, who had earlier headed over from a Downing corner, also had a good chance when picked out by the England midfielder, but just failed to connect when unmarked in front of goal.

Until their late rally the visitors rarely toubled a Liverpool defence containing Jamie Carragher for the first time since the announcement that he will be retiring at the end of the season, a decision duly acknowledged by the Kop before and after kick off. Albion spent the majority of the second half absorbing a Liverpool team that showed far greater intent but, with Suarez given little space by Gareth McAuley or Jonas Olsson and Shelvey struggling badly, the end product remained absent.

On the hour Rodgers replaced Shelvey, rightly, and Henderson, surprisingly, in an attempt to stretch the Albion defence through the energy of Raheem Sterling and Fabio Borini. The Italian forced Foster into another good save with a dipping shot from 20 yards but, as the Liverpool threat grew, so did the performance level of the former England goalkeeper. Twice he denied Gerrard with stunning one-handed saves to leave the Liverpool captain, and Rodgers, shaking their heads in disbelief.


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A news article on 2013-02-11 22:10:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Liverpool v West Bromwich Albion – live! | Simon Burnton

Minute-by-minute report: Will Liverpool beat a top 10 side for the first time this season? Join Simon Burnton to find out


A news article on 2013-02-11 19:05:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool | Premier League match report

Arsenal do not start playing until they are behind. Theirs has been a wacky, impossible-to-fathom brand of football in recent weeks and a sprint through the emotions seemingly comes as standard during their matches. Jeered off at half-time, Arsène Wenger’s players won back their home crowd with a stirring fightback that had Liverpool clinging on for a point at the final whistle.

For Liverpool, this had threatened to be a landmark victory, a first triumph over a team in the top half of the Premier League table and a balm for the horror of Sunday’s FA Cup exit at League One Oldham Athletic. Two goals to the good, thanks to a combination of assured finishing and shocking Arsenal defending, Brendan Rodgers sensed a touchstone. His scathing critique of his young players at Oldham had been felt by the dressing-room. The response shaped up in positive fashion.

This was the fifth time in succession that Arsenal had trailed in the league and yet they hauled themselves in dramatic fashion, with goals from Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott. They went agonisingly close to the winner that would have sparked a frenzy, although the defending of the substitute André Santos meant that Liverpool almost snatched it.

For Arsenal, the talk of the lack of January signings – and the prospect that nobody will arrive before the deadline – gave way to 90 minutes of adrenaline. Several of their players slumped to the turf at the final whistle. Despite everything, it felt like an opportunity missed.

It is that time of the season when the margins have become finer and for these teams, who have been infuriatingly inconsistent, this fixture felt like a six-pointer in the fight for a Champions League finish. Liverpool entered it the angrier, after the humiliation at Oldham, but the early lead that they took owed everything to a catalogue of Arsenal blunders that had Wenger steaming in his sleeping bag coat.

He would not have enjoyed seeing such errors over the course of the game, let alone jammed into a matter of seconds. The first mistake, ironically, was Liverpool’s, when Suárez miskicked as he sought to find the overlapping Glen Johnson. But Bacary Sagna trumped that when he fell over to allow the full-back through after all.

Johnson crossed, Thomas Vermaelen made a hash of the attempted clearance and Daniel Sturridge forced Wojciech Szczesny to save. Aaron Ramsey, though, still could not clear and when Jordan Henderson passed to Suárez, his shot deflected past Szczesny. The arrival of the Keystone Cops would have completed the scene; André Santos did not arrive until the 37th minute, as a replacement for the injured Kieran Gibbs.

The first half was wild, open and unpredictable. Panic bubbled beneath the surface. As a spectacle, it was gripping. Szczesny summed things up when he attempted to fox Sturridge with a Cruyff-turn on his own six-yard line, except that the Arsenal goalkeeper got it wrong and only a desperate foot-in spared him from an impossible explanation.

Suárez was a menace; Liverpool looked dangerous on the counter, with Arsenal exposed. Yet the home team had their first-half chances. When they pressed on to the front foot and harnessed the vision of Jack Wilshere and the pace of Theo Walcott, they sparked anxiety in Liverpool ranks.Walcott almost equalised immediately when he took Wilshere’s ball and forced Pepe Reina to save; Olivier Giroud flickered and Walcott, again, drew the Liverpool goalkeeper into a stop, this one a full-length dive, after Daniel Agger’s brave challenge had halted Vermaelen.

Liverpool had three presentable chances in the first half. Sturridge, released by Suárez’s crossfield ball, shot wastefully; Agger had a thumping header from Steven Gerrard’s corner cleared off the line by Lukas Podolski and Henderson, played through by Stewart Downing, found Szczesny out to meet him. Henderson checked, flighted a chip from 30 yards and saw it drift just over the empty net. Szczesny seemed intent on confirming his maverick status.

Liverpool’s travelling fans had unfurled pre-match banners in protest at the £62 ticket prices but it was tempting to wonder whether the entertainment value made it worth it. The Arsenal support booed their team at the interval.

It would get worse for them before it got better, in the shape of further comic defensive cuts. Henderson, in form and preferred to Joe Allen, did not appear the favourite to power in between Per Mertesacker and Santos but he did just that and he would argue that he earned the luck that followed.

Ramsey’s tackle on him saw the ball canon off Santos and wrong-foot Szczesny. Henderson read the situation and rolled into the empty net.

Liverpool had seen strong penalty appeals for handball against Vermaelen rejected on 50 minutes and yet, in breathless fashion, Arsenal rallied. In the space of five minutes, they not only restored parity, they were within a whisker of leading. Giroud’s header from Wilshere’s free-kick and Walcott’s thumping finish, after slick build-up and Giroud’s cushioned lay-off, rocked Liverpool and Walcott nearly floored them when he cracked just wide of the far post.

Rodgers swapped Sturridge for José Enrique, a defensive change, as Liverpool sought to dig in. But Arsenal swept forward. Santi Cazorla and Giroud, twice, went close before Suárez almost punished Santos. The drama was unrelenting.


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A news article on 2013-01-30 21:57:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Oldham Athletic v Liverpool – live! | Tom Bryant

Minute-by-minute report: Can the League One strugglers pull of a shock against Liverpool? Find out with Tom Bryant


A news article on 2013-01-27 15:23:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Manchester United v Liverpool – live! | Jacob Steinberg

Minute-by-minute report: Can Manchester United extend their championship lead at Liverpool’s expense? Find out with Jacob Steinberg


A news article on 2013-01-13 13:35:00 from: The Guardian

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GUARDIAN – Mansfield Town 1-2 Liverpool | FA Cup third-round match report

For one match only, there was a “This is Mansfield” sign in the tunnel at the ground traditionalists would prefer to remember as Field Mill. The idea was to see if it could have the same debilitating effects as its famous counterpart at Anfield and, at times, there was the distinct sense that Liverpool were not entirely comfortable in this three-sided ground, with its throwback pitch, up-and-at-them opponents and the broken windows in the dugout in which Brendan Rodgers was looking a little uneasy during the second half.

It had looked like it might be a cakewalk when Daniel Sturridge marked his Liverpool debut by confidently scoring his first goal for the club but they had started to look decidedly vulnerable before Luis Suárez soothed their nerves with the second. The Uruguayan now has 19 goals for the season but this one should never have been allowed. There was a blatant handball to put himself into the position to score and Mansfield, who themselves had three justifiable penalty claims for handball turned down, can be justifiably aggrieved bearing in mind it was the point of the match at which they were threatening to bridge the gap between the side 93 places higher in the order of English football.

As it was, there were still some anxious moments for Rodgers’s team after Matt Green scored with 11 minutes remaining. Green, a bustling striker full of hard running, deserved his goal and almost produced an equaliser with a 25-yard effort in the final moments. Liverpool had been pinned back but nobody, ultimately, could put forward a case for an addition to the ‘Mansfield Town Legends’ commemorated in a free poster accompanying the match-day programme.

The prize for Liverpool is a fourth-round assignment against an Oldham Athletic side invigorated from beating Nottingham Forest on Saturday. Mansfield will return to the business of trying to get back into the Football League and the ninth-placed team in the Blue Square Bet Premier can be encouraged by those moments when they enlivened their supporters in a sell-out crowd, not to mention those who could not get tickets so brought stepladders to peer over the side of the derelict terrace that runs along one side of the pitch.

Liverpool, however, could also reflect on more missed chances than they will care to remember, particularly in the first half when Mansfield were in danger of being overwhelmed. Sturridge was bright, lively and eager to impress even if, with a touch better finishing in the first half, he probably ought to have spared his new employers a difficult second half. Jonjo Shelvey stood out in particular, passing the ball at times as though he were playing on a bowling green rather than a pitch that looked as though it had been used for grazing cattle.

Shelvey’s pass for the Sturridge goal was the outstanding moment of the match, weighted beautifully and containing enough disguise and subtlety to dissect the entire defence. Sturridge ran on to the ball, shaped his body and side-footed his shot past the oncoming Alan Marriott.

For the rest of the first half, as the Mansfield goal led a charmed life, it had seemed perfectly plausible that Rodgers had not only restricted Suárez to the role of substitute but had given several others, including Steven Gerrard and Pepe Reina, the day off.

This was a new, experimental team and that perhaps explains why they lost their way in the second half. Exodus Geohaghon, Mansfield’s towering centre-half, caused pandemonium at times, with his long throw-ins and aerial presence whenever there was a free-kick or corner. Green was a constant menace and though Brad Jones, deputising for Reina, made at least half a dozen saves, he also gave the impression at times of being vulnerable.

At the final whistle, one of the Mansfield directors could be seen complaining they had been “cheated”. Suárez had used his hand to make sure he could squeeze the ball past Marriott but the referee, Andre Marriner, missed it and would not back down in the face of prolonged appeals.


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A news article on 2013-01-06 18:21:00 from: The Guardian

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