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This report is in association with a cheese and tomato sandwich - plain fare indeed....

Date:    Wed 30th September 2001, 2.00pm   Venue:    St. James' Park   Conditions:   Sobering.

Newcastle United	0 - 2	Liverpool
Half time:	0 - 1
Score Sheet:
		Riise (3) Murphy (86)
	Teams
Given Griffin Elliott O'Brien Dabizas Solano Lee Bellamy Shearer Robert Acuna		Dudek Vignal Hyypia Carragher Henchoz McAllister Biscan Murphy Riise Heskey Fowler
Substitutes:
Speed for Acuna (57) Ameobi for Solano (73)
Subs not used:
Harper Distin LuaLua		Redknapp Barmby Kirkland Litmanen Wright
Bookings:
Bellamy (90)		Carragher (29) Henchoz (53) Fowler (79) Murphy (89)
Sendings off:
n/a		n/a
Referee: Graham Barber. After initially looking like he was going to be yet another idiot official to outrage the crowd, he settled down and things rolled along reasonably well. No dodgy penalty claims either.
Attendance: 52,095. Highest of the season. The latter stages of the first half were disrupted for a number of fans in the North East corner, as police and stewards again entered the area and threatened those standing up with eviction. When questioned by fans, one steward claimed that the club were acting in response to a complaint from the local Rover Cars Dealerships that their adverts were being obscured by the people in the back row standing up. The reason the away fans aren't similarly hassled is because their aren't any hoardings behind them.  PS - as well as a rousing chorus of "stand up if you hate Sunderland" from aforesaid part of the ground, which mutated into ...if you hate stewards, the chant of the day had to be in response to "where we you when we were sh*t?" - a simple and pertinent "where were you on Wednesday night?" - a reference to their poor crowd v Dynamo Kiev.

3 mins. A personal disaster for Rob Lee who gave the ball away cheaply on the edge of the Gallowgate area while trying to knock it back to Griffin. Riise knocked it through Griff's legs and finished clinically with a powerful strike (65.6mph according to Sky) past a helpless Given. 0-1

Half time: Newcastle  0  Liverpool  1

86 mins. As we searched in vain for an equaliser, Liverpool broke at speed when Ameobi was caught loitering in possession. After a slick exchange of passes with Fowler, Murphy bore down on Given and finished neatly, low to the keeper's left. 0-2

Full time: Newcastle  0  Liverpool  2

Uncle Bobby told journalists:

"We have to start again

"We've lost our home record, we understand that, so now we have to start again. We've lost to a mean machine, a very good side - but I don't think we were very far behind them on the day. In the first-half, it always looked as though we were going to get back into the game after losing an early goal.

"But they are a very experienced, well-organised side.

"We had lots of possession but not many doors opened for us and we couldn't find any cracks in their defence. "So it was a rather mean, goalless afternoon for us.

"Liverpool have shown that, along with Manchester United and Arsenal, they are one of the best three teams in the country and we have a bit to go before we can get to that level. We've lost a narrow game, but we must pick ourselves up and soldier on. Nobody wins or loses anything on the last day of September.

Andy O'Brien also spoke to the media:

I thought Nikos and I coped quite well with Robbie Fowler and Emile Heskey on Sunday.''

How we perform overall this season will depend on how we react to the disappointment of defeat,'' said O'Brien, who joined Newcastle from Bradford City last season in a deal ultimately worth £2m.

"We reacted well after losing at West Ham the other week by hitting back to beat Leicester and we have to do the same at Barnsley.

"We have to learn how to pick ourselves up and put ourselves back in the right frame of mind.

"It was easier after West Ham because the Leicester game was at home and it came around so quickly.

"It's important we don't dwell on the Liverpool defeat for the next week.

"It's easy to be positive when things are going well, but we'll find out about our character when everyone gets back from the internationals.

"Staying positive after a game like Sunday's is difficult.''

"We've seen Man. United at first hand and now Liverpool, and there's not much to choose between them.

"But I think Newcastle are catching up fast and there won't be too many sides who beat Man. United and create the chances we did against that Liverpool defence.''

"It was great to see Gary back - he's been at Newcastle for a long time and it's all credit to him that he's recovered from his injury so quickly.

"It helps the younger lads to have him back in the squad because you can't buy the kind of experience he has."

Gerrard Houllier said:

Press : Gerard, how pleased are you with your team's performance?

Gerard Houllier : It's a good performance and a good result after the Champions League game. It was a strong and solid professional performance. Newcastle are playing well and have a good team so to come here with that performance gives me pride. That's four clean sheets in a row for us now and we are back in business.

Press : There were some fine individual performances...

Gerard Houllier : I would like to give praise to all the players. We scored early on and as the game went on we looked stronger and stronger. They didn't have many chances which proves our defending was good. Compared to the game here last season we probably played better then but lost. Liverpool is not 11 players it is a team and a squad of players. That's how we won five trophies this year. Jamie Redknapp is coming back into contention and Jari Litmanen and Nick Barmby were unlucky not to play today having played very well in the last two games.

Press : What was wrong with Dietmar Hamann?

Gerard Houllier : Didi injured his ankle in training so he couldn't play today but it's not serious.

Press : What did you think of Robbie Fowler's performance?

Gerard Houllier : He made the second goal and worked very hard. Jari probably deserved to play today because he's been playing well but I wanted to give Robbie a game. My strikers worked extremely hard and helped the defence and midfield. People criticised Emile Heskey after the Kiev game which left me very angry. He works so hard, he works his backside off for the team.

Press : Danny Murphy got a deserved goal for his performance

Gerard Houllier : Not many people notice Danny but I'm pleased with his contribution. He's lost weight and works hard and scored a good goal today. He got 10 last season which is not bad for a midfielder.

We lost our unbeaten home record over 12 games stretching back to March (discounting, of course, the Athletic Bilbao defeat in the Lee Testimonial).

As pointed out by reader Jon Kennedy, we've now failed to win any of our last 9 live Sky TV games, 8 of which have been this year. Liverpool (h), West Ham (a), mackems (h) Chelsea (a) this season, Southampton (h), mackems (a) Charlton (a), The Villa (a) cup replay, Birmingham City (a) in the League Cup last season. The last SKY success was in October 2000 at the smoggies.

We have of course won Intertoto Cup games on Channel 5, so it's not all telly, just Keys, Gray and co.

The casual observer seeing this result might well imagine the game went something like this: visitors score early, home side try to get back on level terms, fail to do so and commit more bodies forward as the match progresses. Visitors break away late on and seal the victory.

While the bare facts suggest this sequence of events, there's more light and shade to the way the game unfurled, but unfortunately for toon fans none of it is especially cheery.

Previous Premiership visitations from the Anfield crew have seen some close tussles, but it would be fair to say that St.James' Park is among the more plentiful pastures that Houllier's flock gets to graze upon. Precisely how they left last season empty-handed will forever remain a mystery, but any Liverpool fans who saw that game will feel that their victory on Sunday was overdue.

Conceding an early goal hasn't been much of a problem this season, but when Given was picking the ball out of his net with virtually his first touch, even the most optimistic occupant of Gallowgate would have to admit it was a less than ideal start.

Still, we came forward with something approaching conviction, and our defence kept their end of the bargain in the first half, thanks to some welcome offside flags, a good Given stop from Fowler and timely tackles from the centre backs. However, it became clear that things weren't quite running to plan when both wingers seemed chastened by the presence of a couple of defenders hassling them for the ball. To a certain extent Robert and Solano were played out of the game by intelligent marshalling of Liverpool's resources, but surely that would see exploitable gaps appear elsewhere?

The short answer is no, partly due to the counter-attacking threat from the reds that kept Lee and Acuna on the halfway line in the main, and partly from some distinctly average movement and passing from the rest of the side. Bellamy was again eye-catching when on the ball, but so often faced with the task of shimmying past a posse of defenders to feed a non-existent striking threat in a goalscoring position.

It has to be said that this was a low-key performance from Shearer, with his old trait of pulling out wide to try and find space only rarely being useful. Too often we had small groups of players on the flanks with big holes down the centre, allowing Liverpool to indulge in their party trick of clearances sparking attacks at the other end.

We eventually fell prey to such a move in the latter stages of the second half, but by then the second goal was almost superfluous - the quietness of the crowd after the break confirmed that nobody really thought we'd get any reward for our gallant but uninspired effort.

Liverpool had upped the tempo straight after the break and Murphy had seemed a likely scorer before the ball whistled past Given's post with a United defender just failing to get a touch that seemed likely to have poked it into the net. Fowler then netted but was correctly adjudged offside, and both Hesky and Riise broke free only to see their first touch ruin their opportunities.

Thereafter Liverpool seemed content to allow us to play the ball around in our unthreatening way, rightly sensing that we lacked the means to unlock them defensively. A succession of sideways passes confirmed this, as we struggled to break down a well-organised defence and always looked prone to a lapse that would end the contest. Bobby reckoned that he told his players that if they got back to 1-1, the crowd would get them the winner, but from my seat that was cobblers. We were playing as well as we could, at least in terms of effort while Liverpool always looked like they had another gear or two to step up into, as well as Litmanen, Barmby and Redknapp on the bench.         

No great revelations then, just a sobering reminder that we may have improved as a unit, but many other sides have also got their act together to at least the same degree. We weren't the shambles that we had been at West Ham, but never quite got things working as slickly as Liverpool - and that wasn't due to fate, poor fortune or bad luck. 

Both Robert and Solano allowed themselves to be sidelined, and we suffered as a consequence. The lack of a central midfielder to build attacks with killer balls, and a genuine presence in the forward line to at least try and worry Hyypia and co. were also evident. Dyer would seem to have more chance of being the former, as Bassedas seems to have blown his chances, while Cort of course may be the man for the latter role. However, getting them on the pitch and keeping them there seems to be a task we're not equal to....  

There is an elite group of sides towards the top of the league who have all won silverware recently, with the exception of Leeds, and the sad fact is that we ain't in it. We'll continue to have our days in the sun when the fans sing and the net bulges as it did against Man Utd, but that ruthless efficiency and potency week after week isn't part of our portfolio.

You may feel that's uncharitable, as we don't come across a team of this pedigree very often, and we're eminently capable of beating most Premiership teams, except those that play in London of course. However, if you believe a club with over 40,000 season ticket holders should be reaching for the upper slopes of the league, it's realistic. While we are a team of triers who can play a bit, the likes of Liverpool have the opposite combination. As someone said walking down Barrack Road afterwards, "which of our eleven would have got into their eleven?"     

Biffa

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