Take that la' - Part III: Enter la Bestia

Well, what do you say about a game like that?

As my Liverpool supporting flatmate Jim put it, it was the strangest football match involving Liverpool he has ever seen.

Both managers decided to put out severely weakened teams following Saturday's exertions. I was expecting this from Arsene, but not from Benitez, who I expected to go out looking to win the game and maybe salvage a little pride. In reality it was Liverpool's team that was the weaker, purely because our second string players are of such a higher standard than theirs.

With only two legitimate first XI players in our side, being Kolo and Fabregas, and three in the Liverpool side, being Hyypia, Gerrard and Bellamy, we got the chance to see a lot of players who wouldn't normally be starting for either team. On the Liverpool side I'd never seen Peltier or Guthrie play before, but it was the Argentinian Paletta, who I'd seen before and thought looked a handy player, who stood out for all the wrong reasons. Quite simply Jeremie Aliadiere took him apart all night, and I ended up feeling bad for the guy.

Whilst with four goals Baptista is going to take the headlines today (including the one on this post), man of the match was undoubtedly the aforementioned Aliadiere. He simply ran the show, and once again we were treated to another dominant League Cup from the Frenchman, who just can't seem to transfer that quality into league performances. You may argue that he hasn't been given much of a shake in that department, but when a player is given five years of opportunities, however small, and has gone out on loan to Celtic, West Ham and Wolves, and done nothing at any of them, you've got to question his long term future. Personally I think he needs to move on, if only for his own sake. I think that Bendtner will be above him in the pecking order next season, and offers something legitimately different to Aliadiere, who has shades of Thierry, RvP and Walcott in his game.

Other key performances were Cesc, as always, Kolo, as always, and Almunia, who had no chance for any of the goals in my opinion and looked surprisingly solid for him. Song had a better than usual game, capped with a goal (that he knew almost nothing about), but I still shit bricks every time he's on the ball under any sort of pressure. Traore took a bit of time to get into the game, which is to be expected at his age, but grew into himself as the game progressed. Denilson looked handy but wide midfield is obviously not his position and I think he played there through necessity rather than design. As I was saying in yesterday's post, this again highlights our lack of strength in depth in the wide positions at the moment, which will only be excentuated if Freddie does head off to West Ham with no replacement coming in.

We scored six goals last night, and it was a great performance whilst not playing to our full potential. The first half inparticular, before we scored two on the cusp of half time, was not a dominant display, but we were better in the second and you've got to say, once again, that this young group of players has a fantastic future ahead of it.