It was the week before my WPE. Yet I could not look away from the important game vs Standard Liege at Anfield. Liverpool were scraping through with wins against sunderland and middlesborough, and a better display was certainly needed. But it was no different from the first leg at liege. Liverpool never looked dangerous, but this time though Liverpool’s defense was much better and the opposition wasn’t threatening either. This game meant the world to Standard, as they were over-passionate about the whole thing. Of course champions league qualification meant a lot of money and that means they can probably retain their star players and attract more if they did manage to qualify. It could have happened on another day. Liverpool were professional and their experience in the competition made the difference. Both sides were relentless, neither deserved to win, neither deserved to lose. Eventually at the very possible end of a football game, before the lottery of a penalty shoot-out, Kuyt settled it from a fantastic cross from Babel. Yet again, Kuyt rescues the reds in champions league. How he is not worth to the team I dont understand. At least in financial terms, he’s probably worth the 18m price tag that Rafa put on him, now that he has helped Liverpool qualify.
I beg to differ from many Liverpool fans who think Kuyt is useless to the team.
These are the main qualities of Kuyt
1) He’s always there. His positioning and off the ball movement is top class, perhaps even better than Torres’s which I have noticed on several occasions. This according to me is the most important attribute of a striker. Look at Tevez for instance.
2) He closes down very quickly and puts pressure on the defense.
3) He’s to the midfield, what a midfielder is to the defense. He comes to the rescue of a player caught in possession on several occasions. Benayoun is another player who does that a lot.
His bad qualities
1) Poor finisher. This is why he can never be the target man that Torres is.
2) Low confidence on the ball.
3) Not much of a passer/crosser
I am big fan of Kuyt, who I think gets ripped just because he was not a high profile signing. I am sure players of Liverpool would acknowledge his role in the team. Always a player should be rated by Performance X Ability. Even though Kuyt is probably 70% on ability terms, his performance is 100% always.
I dont even feel like describing the Aston Villa game. I wanted to see Barry’s performance. May be even a juicy competition between him and Alonso. Nothing of that sort happened. You could say it was always going to be a 0-0. I just dont think MON is the sort of manager who deserves all these accolades. Liverpool were without major stars, any other team would have attempted to murder Liverpool especially when they were just pulling off some mediocre performances. I have great admiration for Young and Reo-coker. Reo is certainly among the future stars of england. But they were nowhere to be seen. It was a boring game in summary. I dont remember much from the game, I guess that says it all. It might also be because I am too eager to describe the man utd game 
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