Stupidity and gamesmanship steal Liverpool a point

It was a game that summed up our last few weeks, so near but yet so far, extremely frustrating, we were undone by a complex mixture of factors, certainly several of our own doing, certainly some were out of our control. It's the kind of game that leaves you tearing your hear out at the roots, football can be a cruel master on days like today but that's life, it's terribly unfair but you have to learn from these moments, then move on to better things.

Overall Liverpool defended very solidly and restricted us to only a handful of clear cut chances but over the entire match it was hard to argue that we deserved the three points. Reina looked to have killed our hopes with a terrific late save from RVP, we rallied well with ten minutes to go and pushed hard for the winner, this was after playing poorly for a long time in the second half. Arshavin and Bendtner made a difference, and in the end it told with RVP converting from the spot after a clear foul on Cesc in the box.

The game looked won, there were only a couple of minutes on the clock, the ball was hanging around on the edge of our box, we missed a few chances to clear, Lucas then dived for the umpteenth time in the half and the referee generously awarded a free kick on the edge of the box. By the time it was taken we were well over the extra eight minutes, the ball broke harmlessly towards the wing, Lucas went for it, Eboue followed, somewhat stupidly, Lucas slowed down and exaggerated the minimal contact that he looked for, again the referee generously awarded Liverpool the spot kick, Kuyt converted, our title dreams were crushed.

Eboue had a terrible game defensively and this was summed up with his naive play that allowed Lucas to cheat his way towards another decision from the referee, the hapless Mariner. The diving from Lucas and Suarez was particularly poor throughout the game, time and time again they hurled themselves down after minimal contact. For this reason I have sympathy with Eboue, he was silly and stupid, but Lucas conned him, it was never a penalty, he stopped running for the ball and made the most of the very little contact that he had himself deliberately engineered. The handbags between Dalglish and Wenger were nothing to even bother writing about, that won't stop the gutter press though.

Overall it's just terribly disappointing all round but if we're honest we just have to admit that we have not been good enough when it has counted, we have dropped too many points in the last few weeks, point that you cannot afford to drop if you hope to be champions. The fact that we were done by a bit of gamesmanship makes it that little bit harder to take, but we still should not have given Lucas the opportunity, we had several chances to clear that ball before Lucas dived for the first time. Still, let's not scapegoat Eboue, we would be more sensible to learn from the fact that we have not been good enough in many ways over many weeks. This title was not lost with one moment of idiocy, there have been many moments that have contributed.