Heavy as a feather

Liverpool v Watford

Saturday 23^rd December

The fact that I’d been to Anfield for the first leg of the 2004/5 Carling Cup semi-final was the main reason why I will stay in London until January away games and even though this fixture provided our only premiership victory on the road to date (back in 1999). After today, I’m planning to go to the next 13 games, not counting possible FA Cup 4^th and 5^th round matches, as long as I can get the away tickets. I have to savour these matches, one of which is the return game against the ‘pool in January.

The Reds have got the best defensive home record in the league and no team has scored fewer than Watford so there was, again, an air of inevitability. Local boy Adrian Mariappa made his second premiership start but it was the recall of Ben Foster in goal (despite Lee’s form) that was more newsworthy as he produced a Scrooge-like first half performance (saving everything). For the second Saturday in a row, then, we went in goalless at half-time but, like last week, conceded early in the second when Bellamy was left unmarked on the edge of the box and had time to receive the ball, turn and score before one of our blue-clad defenders got near him.

Watford kept up the work-rate but a couple of minutes before the final whistle, Liverpool split our defence again and Alonso sealed a 2-0 win. Betty said “We have to compete against Muhammad Alis while we are featherweights”. It was a sporting way of admitting we are out of our league, but we couldn’t have expected anything from this fixture or the next when we saw them back in July. However, if we can get something from the last game of this year and the first of next (Wigan (H) and Fulham (A)) and buy wisely in January, we could yet move up a division and become lightweights.