Well, that was a fairly turgid encounter, especially in the second half when Rovers defended magnificently, and everything Liverpool did was just a little bit off. Passes were half a yard this way when they should’ve been that, the finishing was a bit off, they couldn’t quite break their doughty opponents down.
That’ll be all from me. Cheers for reading, drive safely.
Only 2 teams have stopped Liverpool from scoring at Anfield in the last 3 months: Championship sides Bolton & Blackburn.
— Richard Jolly (@RichJolly) March 8, 2015
Full-time: Liverpool 0-0 Blackburn
And that’s it. Brilliant defensive performance by Rovers.
90 mins: One minute of added time...
89 mins: Or not, according to some people...
88mins: Cairney tackles Balotelli, FK to Liverpool and Cairney yellow carded. Ridiculous. 0-0
— Blackburn Rovers (@OneRovers) March 8, 2015
88 mins: Blackburn on the attack, shifting it around and creating some space, but it all falls down when a cross from Taylor hits the first man. Cairney then gets a yellow card for putting his studs into Balotelli’s knee.
85 mins: Not Liverpool’s day, this. Johnson puts over a cross from the right that Balotelli is crowded out of, then Sterling gets to it at the far post but can’t decide whether to go with head or foot. He elects for the former, but it still goes wide.
83 mins: Liverpool win a corner that drops to Henderson, who batters a shot towards goal but Eastwood saves with his legs. Coutinho then dances around half the Blackburn defence with some utterly absurd control in the box, reached the byline, cuts back then tries a ludicrous shot from a tight angle, and it goes wide.
Updated
82 mins: More frustration as Lallana clips over a cross but it’s about three inches too high for Sturridge, waiting in the six-yard box, to get a head on.
80 mins: Balotelli wins a free-kick on the left, which Coutinho hoops over to the back post. Well, actually, only if the back post was in the stand, about 15 rows back. That was desperate.
Updated
79 mins: Balotelli nods it down to Sturridge in the box, but he can’t get the shot away amid some rather half-hearted claims for a penalty. Frustration grows for the home side.
77 mins: Oh, a riff I sort of forgot about. Matt Dony writes: “Dejan Lovren is so bad, Titus Bramble is giving him some extra coaching.”
76 mins: Gestede and Cairney combine in an unusual Blackburn attack, but they can’t quite carve out a chance. It would be one of the most remarkable muggings if they nicked this.
75 mins: This second half, in case it wasn’t obvious, has been fairly grim.
73 mins: Balotelli hooks a terrific pass over the top looking for Sturridge, which Baptiste gets a little head on but can’t divert it from the striker’s path. Sturridge shoots, but he can’t quite wrap his foot around it and the effort flies wide.
72 mins: Rovers briefly break over the halfway line, but Taylor is dispossessed before he can do a great deal. Meanwhile, Toure is limping heavily - the sub may have to be subbed.
70 mins: Balotelli gets the ball about 35 yards out and, inevitably, tries a shot which floats abjectly into the Blackburn fans behind the goal. ‘What a waste of money!’ they equally as inevitably sing, and Balotelli briefly appears to stare them out.
68 mins: Sub for Blackburn - Marshall off, Chris Taylor on.
66 mins: Sturridge wins himself a free-kick on the right corner of the box, takes it himself, thuds it straight into the wall. Nevertheless, this will be a heroic effort if Blackburn hold out for the remainder.
64 mins: Lallana, Henderson, Coutinho and Sterling take turns in trying to break through the massed ranks of the Blackburn defence, camped on the edge of their own area, but they can’t and are eventually penalised as Coutinho gets frustrated and concedes a foul.
62 mins: Liverpool really on top now. Henderson skims a cross over that Olsson has to scramble to jab behind for a corner. From said corner Toure gets another vague chance, but it’s bundled clear of danger.
Updated
59 mins: Bloody hell. Rodgers has somehow made his side more attacking by bringing Mario Balotelli on for Markovic. Bloody hell. Lallana to the right, you’d think.
Meanwhile, Liverpool have a free-kick deep on the left that is swung over to the back post, which Toure gets to with only a vague challenge, a free go at goal, and he heads against the outside of the post. Big chance.
Updated
57 mins: Steven Gerrard, wearing a big scarf and a Liverpool blazer in the stands, thought that was a penner. But then again he would. Meanwhile...
@NickMiller79 Dejan Lovren is so bad that Michael Jackson's estate is suing him for copyright infringement.
— Duncan Cameron (@DuncanMC7) March 8, 2015
56 mins: Sterling glides into the box and nips the ball through, looking for Sturridge, but the pass is too strong. Sturridge went down after Kilgallon put his arm across the striker, very much falling into the ‘I’ve seen them given’ category.
54 mins: Nasty looking challenge on Can from Conway - studs up, into the ankle, but he was going for the ball. With his studs. And late.
53 mins: Smoothie Des Kelly reports that Skrtel lost consciousness briefly, has been taken to hospital for a precautionary scan but he wanted to play on. Blimey.
Meanwhile, Vance Williams has a suggestion for JR: “Dejan Lovern is so bad that Nicholas Cage is waiting to be asked to star in his biopic.”
51 mins: Johnson drills a cross to the back stick for Sturridge, who brings the ball down with some Berbatovian control, he can’t quite get the shot away but Coutinho does. Well, ‘shot’ might be a slightly generous interpretation, as if there was another goal set to the right of the current one, it still would’ve missed.
Updated
49 mins: The corner comes over and Baptiste gets a lot of his noggin on it, the ball flies towards the top corner but Mignolet flings himself to his left and gets a good hand on it. Great save, Gary Bowyer thought it was in.
Updated
48 mins: Some space opens up for Conway who barrels forwards, shimmies past Lovren as if he were not there and Can has to make a desperate, diving challenge.
47 mins: Apparently Skrtel is OK. No advance on/nothing more specific than ‘OK’, but ‘OK’ is better than ‘not OK’.
46 mins: We’re away again, and JR in Illinois needs your help:
“I’ve got a question that I think is in need of crowdsourcing because I can’t seem to come up with the answer. My question is: How bad is Dejan Lovren?
Perhaps this format would be best:
Dejan Lovren is sooooo bad.
How bad is he?
He’s so bad that _____________.
Half-time fact for you, from my colleague and Blackburn fan Michael Butler: Marcus Olsson’s sister Jessica is married to basketballer Dirk Nowitzki.
Coxy tackling the big issues here. He’s right, mind.
Blackburn's kit is really annoying me. The socks don't match, the shade of blue is too light and the halves are the wrong way around
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) March 8, 2015
Half-time: Liverpool 0-0 Blackburn
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. That’s the break, and aside from the last few minutes of the half, Blackburn have been the more threatening side, even if Plan A (get the ball out wide, aim for the vast Gestede in the box) isn’t especially sophisticated. Liverpool have struggled to create much, bar the closing moments. Sets up the second quite nicely, though.
45 mins + 7: Sterling gets down the left and slips inside to Sturridge, with his back to goal. The striker manages to turn round and make himself a yard or so, and blasts a shot in the direction of the top corner, but an alert Eastwood gets enough behind it to save.
45 mins + 6: Henderson swings over a corner which finds Lovren in the box, but it goes so awry that the ball goes straight back to the taker. A one-two, then.
Updated
45 mins + 5: Dangerous free-kick conceded by Liverpool, not far outside the box and to the right as Lovren clumsily takes down Gestede. However, it’s clipped into the box and straight to Mignolet.
45 mins + 3: Markovic skips into the box from the right and tries a shot, but it takes a pretty hefty deflection which takes all the juice out of it, and Eastwood drops on it at the near post.
45 mins + 2: The home crowd are less than happy after Conway appears to drag Sterling down, and the mob have a point on this occasion. No pitchforks or flaming torches, mind.
Updated
45 mins: Eight minutes of added time because of that injury to Skrtel. Can goes into the book for a deeply cynical drag-back on Marshall’s shirt, as he broke goalwards after intercepting a loose Lovren pass. As if there is any other type.
43 mins: Chopper Sterling is defending pretty well here. He produces a fine sliding tackle as Williamson gets down the Blackburn right, looking to get the cross over.
40 mins: Beechawawa.
Gestede is a dreadnought. This is like watching Ewoks trying to take down Imperial Walkers. Liverpool need logs on ropes.
— Iain Macintosh (@iainmacintosh) March 8, 2015
39 mins: Again, a direct ball into the box troubles the Liverpool defence, with a combination of Mignolet and Toure just easing the ball away from Gestede, but not with any great conviction.
“Not having seen the penalty incidents firsthand,” says Shaun Wilkinson. “All I can say is this: Jonny Evans did not handball it. He just isn’t that type of player.”
37 mins: A long diagonal into the Liverpool box finds the chest of Gestede (Chestede? No? Too forced?) and he brings it down with a couple of defenders seemingly politely allowing the other the chance to deal with the threat, which each just as politely declines, but the ball gets away from G/chestede and the chance goes.
Updated
36 mins: Coutinho attempts a repeat of his blooter against Manchester City last weekend from roughly the same spot, but rather than the ball nestling in the top corner, it nestles in the lap of someone in the Kop.
33 mins: GOA...oh, no, it’s been disallowed. A cross comes into the Blackburn area, it ricochets to Toure who belts the thing in from just inside the six-yard box, but the flag is up for offside. Another vague penalty shout involved there too, as the ball struck Gestede’s hand. Again, little intent, again no penalty given.
Another deliberately and entertainingly ill-informed view, here: “Having not seen the penalty incident in question, and being in no way biased by being a lifelong Liverpool supporter, I can safely say that Lallana was robbed.”
Updated
32 mins: More attacking threat from Blackburn, as they pull the Liverpool defence across to the right so much that the left basically opens up, which allows Conway a free shot at goal from the edge of the box, but he zoots it just over the bar. Blackburn the more threatening team here, so far.
31 mins: Coutinho jinks and twists and turns because of course he does, but that time his measured left-footed shot curls wide of the post, after a shot from the edge of the box.
John Corbey writes: “I thought it was a definite penalty to Blackburn and a red card to Gerrard.”
28 mins: Another cross comes in from the left, booming to the far post and Gestede goes for the volley, but not before Sterling got in the way (the ball hit his arm, but he wasn’t facing it at the time) and the striker barrelled into his opponent. Free-kick, and a winded Sterling ensues.
Meanwhile, Marie Meyer writes, on the ‘What’s On Brendan And Gary’s Lapels?’ quandary: “Daffodils, surely. It was St. David’s Day last weekend.
“Which reminds me of how we amused ourselves in rather dull poetry class in college. Take out a rhyming dictionary and mark up famous poems by replacing a key word with the very next entry. Which produces:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden imbeciles.
26 mins: “Not having seen the penalty incident, I must say that I’ve seen them given for less,” says Peter Oh. That’s the spirit.
25 mins: Some pressure from Blackburn here. As daft as this sounds, Mignolet is looking right into the sun and doesn’t have a cap on, so they’re testing him with as many big crosses as possible.
Meanwhile, as a couple of people have pointed out, this looks like a more plausible explanation for the ‘What’s On Brendan And Gary’s Lapels?’ mystery.
23 mins: Very nearly hi-jinx in the Blackburn box after Marshall robs Sterling on the right and puts in a belting cross, behind the defence and in front of the keeper, which Johnson chests just wide of his own post.
21 mins: “I don’t think it’s a star of David,” posits Michael Minihan. “I think it’s a flower to denote International Woman’s Day.”
Actually, looking at the replay of that ‘penalty’ incident, Lallana might’ve had a case. I dunno. Make your own mind up. Preferably without having seen the incident. More fun that way.
20 mins: The ball finds Lallana in some space on the right side of the area, he has a clear go at goal but before he can shoot Matt Kilgallon swoops and delivers a perfectly-timed tackle. Lallana claims the penalty, but no dice there.
Updated
18 mins: Liverpool win a corner after some penalty box pinball actually nearly results in the ball comically finding the net. The ball breaks to Coutinho on the edge of the box and he shoots, but it’s blocked with some gusto by Gestede, and the Brazilian for a moment looks hurt. Probably be able to run that one off, though.
17 mins: “Just wondering,” wonders Kevin Smith. “It appears as though both team’s managers are wearing what looks like the Star of David? Any idea why?”
No idea. Anyone?
16 mins: Another nearly pass from Liverpool, as Henderson intercepts a careless ball from Adam Henley and threads one through looking for the run of Sturridge, but again it’s a little too strong and goes through to the goalie.
Updated
14 mins: Daniel Sturridge plays what is nearly one of the best passes you’ve ever seen, splicing the Rovers defence from deepish on the right, but it was just too far ahead of its intended target Sterling in the box, and Blackburn keeper Simon Eastwood gathers.
Meanwhile, BT Sport smoothie Des Kelly - who, fascinating insider media nugget for you here, is a proponent of the ‘cool guy handshake’ - reckons Skrtel hasn’t broken anything. Which is good.
13 mins: Jordan Henderson gives away a free-kick with a shove on Tom Cairney out on the left. The midfielder himself takes the kick and tosses it right to the back stick, which Gestede gets to above Mignolet, but he can only direct the header just wide.
Updated
11 mins: Skrtel is finally being taken off, and he gives the fans the thumbs up as he is, which is a good sign. Indeed, he actually looked a little annoyed to be leaving the action, which is an even better one, arguably. Toure comes on.
9 mins: Skrtel’s been down for nearly seven minutes now, and he’s only just now being very, very carefully put onto the stretcher.
7 mins: Plenty of worried faces on the Liverpool players. Sterling in particular looks worried. Skrtel isn’t even on the stretcher yet, the medical staff presumably worried about his neck. The big defender sort of landed on his right shoulder/the side of his head from a reasonable height, so you can understand the caution.
4 mins: Doesn’t look great for Skrtel, this. He’s been moving his legs and arms a bit, but not much else. Kolo Toure will be coming on.
3 mins: Nasty moment as Gestede and Skrtel go up for a header and the latter crashes to the floor with some force. He hasn’t moved, and there’s obviously some concern.
Updated
1 mins: And we’re away. Looks like Raheem Sterling at left wing-back for Liverpool. Crivens.
The teams are out. Sounds like a cracking old atmosphere at Anfield. Let’s hope nobody runs onto the pitch and we all have to ban football again.
Updated
Ten minutes to kick-off: just enough time to read Paul Doyle’s piece on Blackburn, out to ruffle Liverpool feathers after surviving fowl times
Blackburn Rovers have found a new way to embarrass the Premier League and it is a darn sight more dignified than the last one. This season the Championship side have ousted two top-flight teams from the FA Cup – beating Swansea City 3-1 and Stoke City 4-1 – and on Sunday they will try to topple Liverpool, all of which makes an impressive change from the days when they made a mockery of the supposed high quality of the Premier League by giving monumental demonstrations of cluelessness and bile.
The Indian chicken barons of Venky’s, who inspired a thousand fowl puns whileunwittingly orchestrating Blackburn’s descent from the top tier in 2012, remain in charge but much has changed at Ewood Park. Despite persistent challenges there is new calmness, even optimism. Not the deluded optimism that led the owners to trumpet their intention to sign Ronaldinho and David Beckham and swagger into the Champions League after taking over in 2010, but a reasonable hope the club have recovered their senses and are moving forward again. Gary Bowyer deserves much of the thanks for that.
Bowyer was 41 when he was promoted from the backroom staff and made thepermanent manager in May 2013. That appointment was as a reward for his halting of the farce that had threatened to send Blackburn tumbling all the way into League One, as during a caretaker stint at the helm he got the results that saved the club from another humiliation. Quiet intelligence began to be applied, even by the Venky’s executives, who soon relieved themselves of the assistance of Shebby Singh, the self-styled “global adviser” who was blamed for many of the club’s deviations from wisdom, including the ill-fated appointment of four other managers in the season in which Bowyer ended up in charge.
Bowyer’s first full season was a triumph over insanity, as the club that had diced with relegation during the previous campaign finished only two points below the play-off places. The owners felt the improvement was good enough to give Venky’s new credibility so that people would actually believe them when, at the end of last season, they offered a public apology for previous misadventures and said: “We have learned some very valuable and costly lessons.”
Adam Hirst recalls another occasion these two met in the FA Cup...
“You haven’t mentioned 1991, when Match of the Day’s Jimmy Hill famously blamed an over-enthusiastic ballgirl for the late equaliser...”
Scott Murray wrote about that in a Joy of Six: FA Cup third round villains...
What’s the proper, non-gender-specific term for a ballboy? Ballchild? Ballperson? Sphere Redistribution Operative? Dunno. Anyway, whatever it is, Jimmy Hill appears not to like them very much. Ahead of the 1988 Wimbledon tennis championships, the Guardian interviewed one of the poor buggers about their craft. “The hardest thing is not to yell when you get hit,” explained Colin Davies, a put-upon Orb Gathering Executive. “We had this practice game with Jimmy Hill playing, and he hit a ball right at me by mistake. I didn’t like that.”
Jimbo has clearly got some sort of deep-rooted problem here, for in 1991 he blamed Second Division Blackburn’s failure to knock reigning championsLiverpool out of the FA Cup on the actions of a ball-girl. Rovers had deserved to win the game. Kevin Moran was unjustly sent off for the home side – even Ian Rush, who Moran sent tumbling to the ground as they both chased a long ball, thought the decision harsh. “I managed to change direction,” explained Rush after the match. “Kevin was coming at me. He didn’t have time to stop or go back. We almost ran into each other. I think it was a foul, but not a sending off.” Rovers were still a goal to the good, but the minutes added for Moran’s red card would prove costly. Deep into injury time, Ray Houghton flung in a ball from the right, Gary Gillespie failed to connect, and the unsighted Mark Atkins deflected the ball into his own net.
Liverpool had escaped with a draw – but only, as Jimmy Hill noted on BBC television after the final whistle, because an over-eager Ewood Park ballgirl had returned the ball to the visitors with indecent haste, allowing Houghton to quickly instigate the move which did for Rovers. Hill was, of course, technically right – but in the final analysis, blaming unpaid workers for the failings of professional footballers is a bit off. And Hill a union man as well. For shame.
“I really, really like Brendan Rodgers and I think we are going to win the league next year,” writes Marie Meyer, from Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Because, unlike him, I do not learn from my past mistakes.”
Liverpool and Blackburn have faced each other in the FA Cup 11 times before, the most recent being back in 2000 when they provided an upset, Nathan Blake scoring the only goal at Anfield to knock Gerard Houllier’s side out. And here it is...
Daniel Taylor wrote at the time:
Just as Liverpool were beginning to believe their renaissance was nearing completion, Gérard Houllier’s world fell apart here last night.
Having laid siege to the Blackburn Rovers goal for long spells of a compelling encounter, the Frenchman’s reconstructed side succumbed to a goal six minutes from time from the striker Nathan Blake.
Exposing some of the old deficiencies in Liverpool’s defence, Blake found himself totally unchallenged to volley home Per Frandsen’s right-wing delivery and effectively render Liverpool’s season null and void.
It was no more than Blackburn deserved after a stirring display to provide further evidence supporting the theory that their own metamorphisis is near to a fruitful conclusion following troubled times.
Liverpool responded by buying Emile Heskey a few weeks later.
Team news
Liverpool
Mignolet; Johnson, Skrtel, Lovren; Markovic, Can, Henderson, Lallana; Coutinho, Sterling, Sturridge. Subs: Ward, Toure, Sakho, Moreno, Williams, Lambert, Balotelli.
Blackburn
Eastwood; Henley, Baptiste, Kilgallon (c), Olsson; Marshall, Evans, Williamson, Conway; Cairney; Gestede. Subs: Steele, Spurr, Brown, Rhodes, Taylor, Henry, Lenihan.
Referee: Mr A.Marriner (Birmingham)
Preamble
Weird game, football. A couple of months ago Liverpool were flapping around like a kid thrown into a swimming pool for the first time without armbands on, panicked and uncertain. They had no bite, little direction or penetration and it was remarkable to see a team that so very nearly won the league title last season so severely thrown off course by the absence of two players. Therefore, Brendan Rodgers was accused of being a chancer and a charlatan, a man who had run out of ideas and had rode the form of Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge last season to gain a healthy reputation as a go-getting young boss.
However, a switch in formation, a change in personnel, a little more attacking intent and suddenly he’s the dogs’ danglies again, to the point that he was moved to deny reports this week that Manchester City are trying to lure him up the road to make their underwhelming side a little more...whelming. You can see the logic; new managers are often a response to the old one, and while Pellegrini has proved to be deeply passive, sticking to his Plan A even when it seems not to be working, Rodgers has been decisive, ripping things up and starting again, to great success. “That doesn’t distract me,” he said of the City link. “I chose to come to Liverpool because I hoped I could be here for many years. The speculation is just the nature of football I think. I remember earlier this season playing Ludogorets away and as I walked off I saw a banner that said ‘Rodgers Out’ so I never get too carried away.
Still, as Winston Wolfe very nearly said, let’s not start orally manipulating each other’s glans just yet. For all the links and the talk and the speculation and Brendan’s awfully high opinion of Brendan, he ain’t won nothing yet, and while their league form has been undeniably impressive it’s not going to win them the Premier League. They’re out of the Europa League and the Milk Cup has gone elsewhere, so the only chance they have of busying the old Anfield silver polish custodian is the FA Cup, which they have a bloody decent chance of snaffling. Particularly when their prospective semi-final opponents could be one of Aston Villa, Bradford and Reading.
In their way, Blackburn, whose season appears to have been neatly embodied by their jet-heeled striker Joshua King. The Norwegian has looked like a world-beater in the cup, issuing new one tears to Swansea and Stoke, scoring a hat-trick against the latter, but has done two-fifths of eff-all in the league, starting just five games and scoring zero goals. The disparity in cup/league form hasn’t been quite as stark for Rovers as a whole, but despite some fine knockout form, they’re sloshing around in Championship mid-table, chances of promotion gone for another season. This would be a prettay, prettay, prettay good consolation though, as adding a notch marked ‘Liverpool’ to their cup bedpost would be simply smashing.
Should be a lovely old game. Stick with us, kid. We’ll see you right.
Kick-off: 4pm
Nick will be here shortly.
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