Avoiding the Drop

Paging Falcon Heene, Falcon Heene to the ATD Courtesy Phone, please

I honestly don’t know what to say about the Liverpool deflected goal fiasco.  I understand their anger.  I watched the Aston Villa/Chelsea and Arsenal/Birmingham matches yesterday, but was following along with the other matches, obviously.  When the description came in over the BBC’s live scrolling feed covering all the matches, this is what was written:

Amazing scenes at the Stadium of Light, where Darren Bent meets Andy Reid’s cross with a shot that cannons off a stray balloon, past Pepe Reina, and into the net. The Liverpool players protest to referee Mike Jones, but the goal stands and Sunderland lead.

Now, obviously, with the Balloon Boy situation this week in the States, this particular bit of hubris by the BBC’s pundit was amusing.  My first thought was “He’s having a laugh, there’s no way that goal should stand.”  My next thought was “If it does stand, Steve Bruce will be the happiest man on Earth because the journos will be quit of his Man of the Match mess and move on to this.”

It’s a crisis at Liverpool, now, obviously.  Five wins and four losses in nine matches leaves them 7 points behind league leading Manchester United, and in 8th place in the league.  The Reds have been particularly poor away from Anfield thus far, with two wins and three losses.  They seem to have a real problem with depth beyond the starters, particularly up front.  The two main goalscoring options, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, missed yesterday’s clash at the Stadium of Light, and it appears that the Reds second choice players at those positions were found wanting.

The run-up to Boxing Day for Liverpool includes next weekend’s fixture with United at Anfield, and matches with Manchester City, Everton, and Arsenal.  It also includes Champions League group stage matches and Carling Cup games.  Rafa Benitez clearly needs Gerrard and Torres available and scoring goals.  Realistically, the four losses at this point are bad, but I would suspect that it’s not the end of the road for the Reds.  Clearly, the other squad players have to learn to deal with adversity better than they are handling it at the moment.  It’s not the end of the world, but they must start believing in each other, their manager and have belief that they can overcome.

Television for today, all times EDT:

SUNDAY
Lokomotiv v Spartak 0600    Setanta
Blackburn v Burnley        0800    Setanta
Lazio v Samp            0900    FSC/FSE
Wolfsburg vs Moenchengladbach, 0925, ESPN360 (SDD ESPND 1300)
Malaga vs Almeria, 1055, ESPN Deportes
Mallorca vs Getafe, 1055, DirecTV
Real Zaragoza vs Racing de Santander, 1055, DirecTV
Wigan v City            1100    FSC/FSE
Bilbao v Sporting        1300    GolTV
Morelia v Pachuca        1300    FSE
AC Milan v Roma 1445    FSE/RAI
Toulouse v PSG 1445    Setanta
Osasuna v Atletico        1500    GolTV
Dynamo v LAG        1500    Telefutura
America v Puebla        1730    Univision

Talk about the matches in comments and enjoy your day!  As usual, we’ll likely be poking around Twitter and here in comments, so feel free to engage us when you see us.  Right then, cheers.