A fine autumnal night in the North West brought our annual defeat at Anfield. A nervous, underperforming, Liverpool side were given a stern examination for thirty crucial second half minutes. However, United, despite having two stone wall penalty appeals turned down, could not find that lucky break and, I’m afraid, class shone through in a game that the hosts, in truth, bossed for long periods.

The visitors, buoyed by the events in their last match, entered the home of the former European Champions in positive mood. Two away wins in a week had gone somewhat repaired the catastrophic damage caused by those two awful goals conceded in our last St James’ outing. Entering the game as underdogs, a tag too often associated with our boys for my liking, we knew that there would probably not be a better time to head to the red half of Merseyside this season.

A Newcastle side, unchanged apart from Steve Harper replacing the unfortunately injured Shay “Lazarus” Given, looked, on paper, massively inferior to the awesome squad Rafa Benitez had at his disposal.

James Milner deservedly kept the much talked about right wing berth, and Damien Duff hogged his preferred left touchline. The Parker and Emre combination, whom had delightfully bossed the midfield at Upton Park, took its usual place in the heart of our midfield.

Surprisingly, Ameobi managed to, for the time being, shake off his hip injury enough to take his place alongside the explosive Martins.

The back four remained unchanged after putting in an excellent stint at West Ham the previous Sunday.

The opening half, sadly, offered little in encouragement for the travelling Toon faithful. The only attacking moves of note were a storming run from our, once again, outstanding skipper, into the heart of the Liverpool defence, which, unfortunately, resulted with no end product.

On the other hand, baring a couple of incidents, we looked rather solid at the back. Moore and Ramage looked settled in the middle and Carr and Babayaro were handling things decently at full back.

The first real opening of the game came early on. Bellamy was slipped in and his raw pace allowed him behind our backline, only for our stand in keeper to be on his toes and beat the Welshman to the free ball.

Minutes later another exquisite through ball allowed another run in on goal for the ex Newcastle man, this time a poor first touch pushed him wide. However, he still managed to get a good attempt in, on target, and produced a good save from Harps, that could only fill him with confidence.

After twice being penetrated early on, the lads subconsciously started to defend much deeper. A gap opened up between our midfield and front men, who had been anonymous in the match so far. This resulted in twenty minutes of bombardment on the away goal, which, as ever, could only result in one thing…

Liverpool 1 Newcastle 0, and a brilliant goal at that. Xabi Alonso, out of absolutely nowhere, produced a defence splitting pass fit to grace any football pitch on the planet. Finnan then produced a sublime ball along the deck and Kuyt nipped in, ahead of the unaware Ramage and stabbed the ball past the onrushing keeper. A brilliant goal, and little we could have done about it. A bolt from the blue, or should I say red, that really stunned the United camp, as we had done little wrong defensively up to this point.

Our hosts never really created anything of note apart from that before the half time whistle. The home side peppered our goal with long shots, but nothing of any note to trouble Harper.

The whistle came to the relief of the Toon faithful. The lads never really got out of first gear and, in my opinion, gave Liverpool far too much respect early on. They key about trips to Anfield, Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, and all other top grounds, is to treat them as your equals. They have eleven men on the pitch, and so do we. We’re both Premiership teams, we’re both in the same league.

Roeder brought his disheartened troops in for a much needed breather at half time and rallied them superbly. Whatever he says at the interval certainly inspired the lads, as it has done on many occasions since his controversial appointment.

Within minutes we had had not one, not two, but three penalty appeals turned away from the, seemingly, home biased, Mr Halsey. The first was when a smart little header from the, rather poor, Emre put Ameobi in on goal. The lanky Nigerian then seemed to be, quite deliberately, tripped and pulled by Jamie Carragher. The referee, barely ten yards away, saw the incident as clearly as he could possibly want, and denied what seemed a stone wall penalty for the visitors.

Minutes later the second and third penalty appeals occurred, within a matter of seconds of each other. Both handball appeals were waved away somewhat dubiously, to the annoyance and sheer frustration of the travelling faithful. To me, both looked certain penalties, even Benitez agreed. They were the type of handballs you would expect to be given, but not to a visiting team at Anfield. I wonder if they would have been awarded, had they been at the opposite end of the pitch.

Either side of the penalty events, Liverpool had two glorious chances to put the match well and truly out of our reach. The first, a defensive howler you would associate with schoolboy football, allowed three of our men to chase the ball down the left wing, allowing an unmarked Kuyt to miss the simplest of chances. This, followed by an absolutely glaring miss from a below par Bellamy, were two moments to enjoy for the Magpies on the night, where happy moments were few and far between.

A couple of cracking Harper saves and a rattle of our post later and the game seemed to sauntering towards a marginal home win. Then disaster struck. N’Zogbia crucially lost the ball needlessly in the opposition half and the superb Xabi Alonso looked up, spotted that the, otherwise magnificent, Harper had strayed off his line to counteract the dynamic pace of you know who. A speculative strike was all that it looked at first, with everyone watching expecting a confident keeper to stroll up and collect it without any problems. As Harps back peddled to make a comfortable stop he crucially slipped on a greasy looking pitch and his despairing dive was in vain as the ball bobbled past him into the net. GOAL OF THE CENTURY!!???!!! I think not. If you believe that then you don’t know two fig rolls about football. It was a keeper mistake. Yes, granted it was a great spot and executed well, but no by no means was it brilliant. Had our stopped not unfortunately slipped, the ball goes straight into his welcoming gloves and it remains 1-0. Let me take you back to Beckham Vs Wimbledon. Now that was brilliant. Not only did he spot Sullivan, barely off his line, but he had the technical ability to lift it over his head. I’m not taking anything away from Alonso, but there is a difference between a lucky goal, from a good strike of the ball, and a great one. This is a prime example.

After that there was no more action of not on the pitch. Both players and fans alike seemed stunned at what had previously happened and the game petered out into a, comfortable looking, 2-0 home win.

Of course there was the usual antics from Bellamy after the match, but I’m not going to waste my time on that little “upstart”. The performance of United, on and off the pitch, is the only thing of my concern.

Baring in mind the poor quality of defenders we had on show, they can mainly leave this week with their heads help high. Carr, Babayaro and Ramage are not Newcastle United quality, but they gave their all on Wednesday against far superior opposition. Defensive reinforcements are a must in January.

Do not be too despondent after this defeat. We were beaten by the better team. Simple. Just like we were beaten 2-0 by them last Boxing Day. Same result, different after match feeling. Last season we were awful, dreadful, incompetent and down right shit. This season, yes, the result was the same, but we left Anfield with some pride for once. We were beaten by a brilliant goal and a goalkeeper error. We played some good stuff in the second half and let’s not forget we’ve been robbed of the services of Owen, Dyer, Taylor, Bramble, Solano and, vitally, Given for the foreseeable future. We have a good squad at Newcastle United, and for thirty second half minutes here we have shown we can compete with them when we put our minds to it. It’s now up to Glenn to get us back to winning ways on Sunday.

Keep the Faith