Cooler heads will prevail. Liverpool fans need to take that statement to heart. We won nothing but a match yesterday and need to realize that. Fabio Aurelio knows exactly what I'm talking about. The 28-year-old Brazilian has pleaded with everyone to remain focused: "Winning 8-0 against Besiktas gives us confidence and we need to take that on. We knew we needed to improve after recent results and we still need to improve. We must still work really hard - starting on Saturday. We must keep pushing ourselves." It was only one positive step forward on a long, arduous journey to come.
The Irish, ever self-involved, made a point to say that one of their own 'played no part' in the record-breaking performance yesterday. I disagree. Finnan is one of our best and most important players, without him available to rotate and rest Arbeloa, there's no way the Spaniard would have been able to put on the performance that he did. Finney should be back to take on his former club, Fulham, on Saturday.
Turning to the blogs, we have Who ate all the Pies? chiming in with their '10 conclusions' of the match. That site never ceases to amaze me with the brainless drivel they produce. Taking a quick gander, they make a half-assed attempt to pat themselves on the back with their first conclusion by stating that Rafa should play Crouch more often. More often? No surprise that a superficial site, easily manipulated by the media, would fail to do any research. Crouch has now appeared in five straight matches for us. I'm not going to spend much more time deriding such nonsense, but the eighth conclusion caught my eye as well: "I have never rated Alvaro Arbeloa particularly highly, but he was outstanding at right-back last night. Whether that was just because his defending was never really called into question remains to be seen." First off, they've never rated Arbeloa because they're Man U fans, but I won't get into that. Second, um, did you not watch the Champions League match at Camp Nou last season? Arbeloa owned that nobody Lionel Messi, there must have been a Man U match on at the same time. Anyhow.
Another blog that tries to woe the hits with shock jock headlines is CaughtOffside. One of their reactions to the match was this: "Rafa Benitez gets cocky after Liverpool thrash a very bad team." It's quite convenient that the article was apparently without an author as no one with even the intelligence of a baboon would own up to such rubbish. It was probably either an Everton or Man U fan sickly green with envy. The backbone-less author alludes to the thrashing of Derby and how it made us Liverpool fans 'think they might win the title before they went on their usual run of disappointing draws and losses.' What losses is he referring to? We're still undefeated in the league and only six points out from Arsenal. His delusion continues by trying to ridicule and spin Rafa's post match comments from yesterday by trying to convince himself that Rafa believes Beşiktaş are on par with the best clubs in the world. A pathetic attempt to assuage his irrationality nonetheless.
Unlike our friend over at CaughtOffside, the Guardian printed more of what Rafa said instead of just picking and choosing to spin and manipulate. If you want to read more on that, go here. It's funny how it sounds completely different when one lacks an agenda, doesn't it?
The Beşiktaş side is expectedly dire in their response. Their manager, Ertuğrul Sağlam, only had this to say before walking out on the post-game press conference: "It is very upsetting and we would like to apologise to our fans. It is very difficult to accept a result like this. We know we must work harder and we will do. Thank you very much." Club president Yildirim Demiroren seemed to think hard work won't be enough as he has proposed letting players go for such an embarassing result. Wow, that's a bit harsh. Imagine if we did that after the Marseilles match. There's a good chance Peter Crouch wouldn't have been around for this one if so.
Finally, two quick links if you have time to kill: icLiverpool has a list of greater European victories & the ever-intriguing Paul Tompkins sounds off on yesterday's match. Cheers.
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