Thursday, February 11, 2010 . 6:37 AM

Argh what a frustrating match to watch.

The good news - that Aston Villa drew and Tottenham lost so Liverpool still held on to 4th place.
The bad news - that we failed to capitalize on the dropped points by the aforementioned teams, and that Man City has equal points as us with 2 games in hand.

It's not as if Liverpool played much worse than their opponents... Actually both teams played equally badly. It's just that Liverpool were forced to substitute arguably their best defender for a subpar right-back, and it was exactly that subpar right-back that cost us the goal and the game.

It had been a main feature of Liverpool's first half of the season. I'm not sure of the statistics, as Tomkins would love to refer to, but each time I watched I was appalled by Glen Johnson's inability to pick up men at the far post when crosses came in from Liverpool's left. He aerial ability and man marking are poor in that respect, and it was the same thing today from Degen that cost us the goal from Diaby. It was a great cross from Rosicky, but Degen should have (especially after the rest of the defence delayed the initial cross coming in from Bendtner) picked up Diaby at the far post... Instead, he let the Arsenal No. 2 run past him for a free header and a goal as a result. Very poor defending. I wonder if we would have conceded had Jamie Carragher remained on the pitch. It's no coincidence that Liverpool's defence has been much improved since Glen Johnson got injured and Carragher was shifted out to right back. It's no coincidence either that our defence shipped so many goals in the 1st half of the season after Arbeloa was sold to Real Madrid. Glen Johnson and Philipp Degen may have attacking quality in spades, but their defending leave a lot to be desired, and that's supposed to be their primary responsibility!

Two other glaring mistakes that Degen made today were the awful return pass to Dirk Kuyt after Liverpool had won possession, allowing Arsenal to counter, which won them a corner, and the other one tapping the ball out of play while trying to do a step over after receiving a 50-yard diagonal ball out on the right wing from Gerrard. In a great position to cross and he fluffed it. No wonder they say Liverpool's bench is weak.

I still don't get why Benitez keeps leaving Babel on the bench. He came on and played just 13.5 minutes, but in that 13.5 minutes, he became the player who took the most number of shots for Liverpool, and was the closest to scoring. Why Ngog starts before Babel is a mystery to me. I think Riera should have come on as well, Maxi was incredibly ineffective. Lucas played well I thought. He's really improving and maybe he's not as sucky as I make him out to be... He was excellent against Everton and was solid again today. Had a chance on goal and took a good shot given the angle, just couldn't keep it down.

Sadness. We must beat Man City at the weekend. That game is worth 6 points to us now that we've failed to consolidate our 4th place.

"You'll Never Walk Alone"

Archangel