Both of my football interests won their respective games on Tuesday night. First, Liverpool’s hard fought 2 – 1 victory over Marseille at the Stade Velodrome. Liverpool found themselves behind after playing the offside trap one time too many times allowing Lorik Cana a one on one with Reina, calmly sidefooting past the Reds keeper on 23 minutes. Steven Gerrard was on top form in his return to first team action scoring an amazing outswinging curler from more than 20 yards out to level the scores on 26 minutes. Gerrard found the target again on the 32nd minute from the penalty spot after Ryan Babel was was brought down by Ronald Zubar. Liverpool looked sharp in the first half but were pegged back in the second, consistently having to defend wave after wave of attacks. Pepe Reina and Jamie Carragher did an excellent job in preserving the one goal lead as the home team pushed forward. Liverpool sit second in their league behind Atletico Madrid on goal difference who beat PSV Eindhoven 3 – 0 who Liverpool face in two weeks time at Anfield!
Plymouth Argyle managed to achieve their first win of the season in a game that many didn’t give them a chance in hell of winning. In this case Paul Sturrock made the right selection and tactics to win this game beating Watford 2 – 1 with Karl Duguid and Luke Summerfield finding the target. A lot of people have been saying that he was lucky, but dropping a number of players have had an immediate effect on results. But I do wish Sturrock would shut up about ‘honest football’, no matter how much a team wants to win, if the quality of players isn’t there, it’s going to be hard to come away with three points. The coming weeks will show whether or not Sturrock is getting to grips with Championship management. Next game is away at Crystal Palace which will be another tough game, but I have learned to never count out Argyle in tough away fixtures as they do tend to have an uncanny knack of getting the result against all odds. Plymouth have moved off the bottom of the table up to the heights of 20th, level with Saturday’s rivals Palace so that’ll make for an interesting game of football, I’m interested to see if Sturrock plays the same XI or shuffles his pack! But a win is a must to keep our season rolling now it has finally started!