Draw With Villa For Reds

Gerrard, Suarez and Shelvey get ready...
Liverpool managed to make a slight improvement on recent form as they held Aston Villa to a 1-1 draw at Anfield on Saturday. Aston Villa took the lead with a goal from Chris Herd but Luis Suarez equalised late on for the Reds.

Dalglish appeared to give Andy Carroll a reality check as he was allowed only to start from the bench. That man Kuyt who never gives up was opted to start and aided Suarez up front. With Reina beginning his suspension, Doni was chosen to play between the sticks.

Villa got their goal very early on and almost sadly, it wasn't even a surprise. This sort of thing was expected because Liverpool of late have just been terrible. The good thing was that with 80 minutes left, just maybe we could do something about it.

A ball was whipped in by Warnock and whilst Doni's punch wasn't confident it was enough to put the ball out of danger and get himself back into position. Unfortunately for Liverpool though the ball fell to Chris Herd who with a lovely strike beat Doni and put Aston Villa 1-0 up.

For Liverpool the time in between Villa's goal and their equaliser was a frustrating one. It was clear within the first and second halves that there was a renewed sense of effort. The Reds were almost bombarding the Villa goal at stages but as always the goals weren't coming and luck wasn't going our way.

Dirk Kuyt of all people missed a sitter when he smashed the ball over from 2 yards out. Add to this the fact that there were two calls for hand ball that was brushed over despite them being clear cut cases and also that Luis Suarez was fouled in the box but no penalty was given supposedly due to his "reputation" well that you have a recipe for things not going Liverpool's way.

Suarez was also booked for simulation when he was fouled again. It's getting to a ridiculous stage now because we all know Suarez sometimes doesn't help himself but it's a referee's job to treat every game and every player equally at the start of each game, it shouldn't matter what they did in a world cup or last week.

The thing is though, (Ooo i missed the fact we hit the bloody woodwork too!) all of this lot is meaningless, they're excuses and whilst of course better decisions would have helped our plight in a game where we actually played quite well, we need to realise that you can't always win games by relying on decisions.

Liverpool managed to find an equaliser just after the 80 minute mark. A Daniel Agger header came off the bar and left Suarez with an easy second header to put past Given.

A stinging shot into extra time from Steven Gerrard nearly found Liverpool a winner but Shay Given with a strong pair of hands denied the Reds.

Whilst Liverpool certainly deserved more from the game and it didn't appear as though Villa really deserved anything i think it's another important lesson for the Reds especially going in to the Blackburn game and then FA Cup Semi Final next week. Results aren't handed to you just because you're the better team, sometimes you just need a bit more of that cutting edge and you always need triers and to be fair to Liverpool, on Saturday they finally seemed like they were bothered.

It's still not good enough but in all honesty, the league campaign has already gone tits up, let's just hope we can get a few more results to finish above Everton!