Nowhere to go: Luis Suarez tries to keep the ball away
from Dean Whitehead
Frustration: Suarez was feeling hard done by after
being brought down
It says much for the underwhelming nature of this
afternoon that one of the most dramatic acts was saved until 30
minutes after the final whistle.
Asked for the second time about Luis Suarez’s apparent
dive in the Stoke penalty area 15 minutes from time, visiting
manager Tony Pulis invited the assembled media to draw their own
conclusions and swept suddenly from the room rather like the diva
we all know he isn’t.
In the moments beforehand, however, Pulis had already said
enough.
‘I don’t know how many times he has fallen over but the
one in the penalty box is an embarrassment and how he has not been
booked I just don’t know. Retrospective decisions are made on
a Monday by the FA and they should be looking at this. Give him
three games and he will stop falling over.
‘He puts pressure on the referee and every time he goes
down you’ve got 40,000 Liverpool fans getting after the ref and I
don’t think that’s right.’ Pulis had a
point.
Who is ever going to award the Uruguayan anything when he
falls over in the manner he did when challenged by Marc Wilson 10
minutes earlier? As acts of simulation go it wasn’t even well
executed. It was so obvious that even some of the home supporters
chuckled.
‘I didn’t see it,’ said Rodgers afterwards. ‘Whatever Luis
does will always be a problem, whether it’s with the media or refs,
but I thought he was terrific today.’
One imagines that when Rodgers does see the incident on
playback, he may speak to Suarez. The Liverpool manager has enough
to contend with as he tries to get his team’s season off the
ground.
Despite his team scoring five at Norwich a week earlier,
Rodgers can’t find a Barclays Premier League win in front of the
Kop and his team rarely looked like delivering one here. One step
forward, two steps back.
This was a poor game. Liverpool struck the frame of the
goal four times and Stoke had six players booked.
To suggest that Liverpool were unfortunate and Stoke too
physical would not be accurate, though. The home team were no more
deserving of three points than the visitors, while referee Lee
Mason fell into the trap of believing that every time Pulis’s team
make a tackle it had to be a foul.
Stoke were the happier side at full time. Having
enjoyed the better of the possession in the first half-hour,
they were gradually pushed back by Liverpool but looked fairly
comfortable.
Making his point: Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard has
a word with referee Lee Mason
This unfamiliar-looking Liverpool team has some
promising footballers in it. Joe Allen looks a good player, even in
a modest team, but they rely too heavily on Steven Gerrard and
Suarez for energy and drive.
Rodgers is still being hampered by Liverpool’s peculiar
conclusion to the summer transfer window. His squad looks
desperately thin and he will be glad to see
January.
Stoke, on the other hand, continue to work to a clear
strategy. They were very much in this game from the first moment to
the last.
Rodgers likes to encourage his players to pass the ball
inside their own half but Stoke’s energetic pressing made that
difficult and Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina twice had to save in
the first half, from Charlie Adam and Michael Kightly, when his
back four gave away possession.
In the first half Liverpool found it hard to keep
possession long enough to develop any momentum. Gerrard brought the
best from Asmir Begovic in the Stoke goal in the 27th minute while
Daniel Agger poked a chipped pass from Suso on to the outside of
the far post two minutes later.
It wasn’t until the second half that Liverpool
caused Stoke sustained problems. Twice full back Glen Johnson came
close — once when working Begovic from distance and again when
nudging a shot over the bar.
Occasionally, the game threatened to boil over. Liverpool
were becoming agitated by what they thought was Stoke’s reliance on
the physical, while Suarez’s dive did little for the atmosphere or
his reputation.
Rodgers was sanguine. ‘Stoke are a team of big lads but we
stood up to them,’ he said. ‘I have no complaints’
Late in the game Raheem Sterling struck the post, Suarez
hit the angle and Martin Skrtel hooked a shot across the face of
the goal.
It was a relatively rousing conclusion to an uninspiring
afternoon.
