By LFC Vancouver member Keith Perkins, 27 April 06.

It’s been quite a weekend for everyone at Liverpool Football Club, not only with the defeat of Chel$ki to put us into our 13th FA Cup final. Congratulations are also in order for Rafa the Gaffa for being named Coach of the Year for 2005 by la Communidad de Madrid.

Another major award was also won by our inspirational captain Steven Gerrard as he was named PFA Player of the Year. Well done Stevie lad! The competition was tough as always with Frank Lampard, John Terry, Thierry Henry, and Wayne Rooney also nominated. The decision takes into account the 2005 Champions League victory, as well as the performance over the past year. Without a doubt, Stevie G. is more important to Liverpool than the other nominees are to their respective clubs. All together now:

Steve Ger-rard Ger-rard
He passes for 40 yards
He scores and he tackles hard
Steve Ger-rard Ger-rard

And, as if that wasn’t enough for one week, then congratulations are also in order for the Liverpool young-uns, for picking up the FA Youth Cup. Well done lads!

By LFC Vancouver member Keith Perkins, 25 April 06.

All I can say is that I hope that you had as much fun as I did. That was without a doubt the best atmosphere for a match since last year’s Champions League Final. Thanks to Steve and Craig and all the staff at Library Square Public House for hosting this one, and of course thanks to all of you Reds that were there and helped to make the event one to remember.

Of course it helps to have a more reasonable kick-off time of 9:15am to allow for a good night’s sleep before the match. The doors opened a little before 9am. If only I’d known that a breakfast special was on offer then I wouldn’t have bothered eating before I left the house earlier. A few blue shirts were evident with some Chel$ki lads brave enough to come and join us. As the bar filled up with well over 50 Reds, they must have felt a bit outnumbered. There was no comfort for them in realising that the only “neutrals” were two or three Celtic Bhoys, who were anything but neutral – cheers lads, it was great to have you along with us.

As you might have guessed from last week’s newsletter, I was not intimidated by the prospect of facing Chel$ki for the semi-final. If we want to compete for trophies, then we have to play with and beat the top clubs at some stage. If we don’t have the confidence to do that then we might as well not show up. On the other hand, if you have to lose then it might as well be at this stage. A good run might come to an end but it’s better than facing the disappointment of losing in the final itself. For this year’s cup run we’ve beaten Premiership clubs Portsmouth and Birmingham after a scare at Luton, as well as beating Man Ure, and now Chel$ki – do we need to fear anybody?

For some reason, the anticipation from last week turned into expectation of victory. I just had that certain feeling deep in my bones that we were going to win this one; and not with some disputed goal this time. I had the same feeling against Man Ure, with the desire to see revenge for our defeat a few weeks earlier. Our losses to Chel$ki also hurt of course, and so I was hoping we would be drawn against them this time and have the chance to show them how lucky they were earlier in the season. My fearless prediction was that we would win 2-0 with a goal from Gerrard in the first half and a late goal on a counter attack from Cisse. I never expected a boring defensive match as I knew that the first goal would be so important and could be the decisive one. I also knew that we wouldn’t make the same mistakes as before and that our defensive abilities are even better now than at any time this season. The battle was probably going to be fought in the middle of the park, where I think we have the advantage over most other clubs, including Chel$ki in spite of their millions. So a 2-0 result didn’t seem all that unlikely to me.

Right from the kick-off this was a fast paced attacking match. The most pleasing thing was how we seemed to be quicker off the mark, taking control of the match and looking the better side right away. An early scare came with Drogba getting a long ball played up to him in the clear, with no flag from the linesman. He must have been two or three yards offside, but luckily for us he knocked it wide. Only a few minutes later, with us on the attack again, a free kick was given at the edge of the box for a dangerous challenge from Terry against Garcia. Right away I’m thinking this could be where Gerrard gets the first one. In fact it was a side tap from Riise to Gerrard who trapped it and let JAR place it perfectly through the gap in the wall. 1-0 for us and no I’m not concerned that my prediction is already slightly wrong.

We continued to attack and had the freedom to run on both flanks with Kewell playing the best we’ve seen since his days at Leeds. For some strange reason Jose “the master tactician” Moron-io had not expected us to play wide and so had packed his players in the middle. We could have had the goal of the season when Crouch nodded down to Kewell on the left just inside the Chel$ki half, and ran to the edge of the box. A perfectly weighted pass picked out Gerrard on the far side of the box, where he controlled the ball, took it to the goal-line past a stranded defender and then cut it back into the path of the onrushing and unmarked Garcia. That should have been our second, but as Garcia is prone to do, he blasted it over the bar. As Paul commented: “He doesn’t score simple goals.”

We had a real scare when John Terry looked to have equalised early after the restart. Those of you who heard a squelching sound at LSPH were hearing the sound of my heart sinking and landing on the floor. Fortunately, my heart has built up resilience over the years and was soon bouncing back up to where it belonged (on the sleeve) when we realised that the goal was disallowed. Terry had climbed up on Riise’s shoulders to get his head to the cross. The accuracy of Paul’s earlier comment about Garcia came through less than ten minutes into the second half when our favourite Sangria sipper took advantage of a Chel$ki defensive mix up from a somewhat routine Finnan throw-in, control the ball and take a clear run at Cudicini, then lobbed the ball beautifully from the edge of the area, across the goal into the top of the far corner. That was probably the best since his spectacular goal against Juventus last year. Bedlam ensued at LSPH as we celebrated; we knew that one goal would probably not be enough and we would need a second to be sure. Now we have it, and we still look as though we’re in control.

Moron-io seemed to admit his mistakes at this point and tried to change the course of the match with a double substitution of Cole and Duff to add some width. Robben had already been brought on to no effect at the start of the second half but there had to be some way for Chel$ki to get back in this one. Sure enough they began attacking in waves but we held on until the 70th minute when a misjudged defensive header from Riise looped into the air in the box, allowing Drogba to beat Reina to the ball in the air and make it 2-1. All we had to do was to survive roughly twenty minutes of agony and all would be well.

It wasn’t so easy, and was summed up by Bill as being so stressful that he was thinking of looking for some other hobby to pass the time. Something like skydiving or hang-gliding would be easier than this. We held firm and watched the clock count down toward the end, but were shocked to see that there would be five minutes added on. This brought back memories of last year’s six minutes of stoppage time where Gudjohnsen almost stole the match with a shot across goal with less than a minute left. This time it was déjà vu all over again as Cole found himself in the clear, but thankfully hit it high over the bar from less than ten yards. That must be it and sure enough the final whistle came to put us through to the final in Cardiff. Roll on May 13th.

After the match, Moron-io showed his total lack of class by not shaking hands with Benitez. That was bad enough but worse was to come when once again he refused to acknowledge that his side had just been beaten. His whining is becoming sickening with his complaints that the referee won the match for us with a bad call on the free kick leading to the first goal and should not have disallowed what would have been the equaliser. Those of us watching on Saturday would have a different view of the referee’s performance, with most of us thinking that we won in spite of several bad calls against us. Overall, I have no serious complaints about the refereeing. Graham Poll did well to keep the match flowing which is what we all want, and in the end we know that it’s no use complaining about poor officiating. The match is won and lost by the players on the pitch; it’s up to them to deal with it. At least the few Chel$ki lads at LSPH had the class to admit that we won mostly because of Moron-io’s failure to put out a side that could contain us. The choice of his starting eleven mystified these lads as much as it pleased us. It’s good to see that not all blues have that arrogance and can admit defeat; the “ordinary one” should take note. If you look in a dictionary for “sore loser” you’ll see a picture of Moron-io.

The simple fact of this one is that Rafa out-manoeuvred Moron-io in terms of tactics. It should be simple for a manager with the resources that come from Abramovich’s billions to select a squad that can beat anybody. When you consider the players that are available, and the ones who are sitting on the bench, then the only excuse is that perhaps there is too much choice. Moron-io is clearly not the master strategist that he is made out to be. His tendency to bait the opposition from before the match with his comments about their lack of ability, to his comments after the match about how the referee was against them, and how the best team didn’t win, and how teams like Liverpool will never catch them should give this man a new title: instead of “Master Tactician” it should be “Master Baiter”.

Drop us a line and let Keith know what you think of this article

From Sueyin, a link to Garcia's goal against Chel$ki. If you do a search on the site there (youtube.com) you'll find a pile of LFC stuff.

As most of you might have found out via email last week, author Paul Tomkins has offered LFC Vancouver members a discounted rate on his new book Red Revival. Paul wrote last year's "Golden Past, Red Future" which was an excellent read, and his articles appear on the official site on a weekly basis as well as other sites such as RAWK.

If you're interested in buying it let us know and we'll do a bulk order. We'll save money on shipping from the UK this way, and all together it should come to $25 CDN which is reasonable, hopefully even less (it's hard to say without knowing how many books will be ordered). If we get 10 people interested we'll go through with the order, and we'd like to thank Paul Tomkins for the offer.

Also, let us know if you're interested in tickets to the inaugural game of the Whitecaps tournament that goes on sale soon, featuring Cardiff as well as the Indian national team and China's U20 team. We could get a deal on those as well. And let us know how you'd feel about discounted Whitecaps tickets for LFC Vancouver members.

If anyone has anything else to say (buy/sell, jokes, rants, raves, whatever) drop us a line.

Oh, yeah:

P Gill

send us an email if you have anything to announce, sell, or would just like a rant/rave.