Manchester City vs Liverpool

Sunday’s live match was Robinho’s Manchester City vs Liverpool. I watched this on digitalb, but somebody forgot to flick the commentary, and the English audio stream was silent for the whole match. I watched about 20 minutes like this (it’s very weird watching a match with no sound at all) before switching over to the Albanian audio so I at least had the crowd noise. Probably makes more sense than the English commentary, and is an improvement on Andy Gray at least.

It was a pretty exciting match, with Liverpool going 2-0 down to City before the break, before a Fernando Torres double and Dirk Kuyt winning the match in injury time. At half time, I couldn’t see Liverpool coming back into it at all, but they played very well in the second half, much as it hurts me to say.

The match could go down as one of those feted “this is why the Premier League is so great” matches, and in truth, it was pretty enjoyable, even if I got the result I didn’t want. Sally was pleased though, as Torres is in her fantasy team.

The match saw a red card for a pretty reckless tackle by Zabaleta on Alonso, which was well deserves. Martin Skertel was stretchered off late in the match after a challenge on Ched Evans left him writhing in agony on the pitch, although he was potentially lucky still to be on the pitch at that stage following a high tackle on Jo.

I half-wonder if the match was more enjoyable due to the absence of English commentary, allowing me to watch the match and make up my own mind about what’s going on, rather than listen to some gormless summariser who says the referee has made a mistake, then over the course of several replays gradually changes their tune to say that the referee has made a good decision.

Liverpool for once seem to have credible title credentials, although the depth of their squad could be an issue, especially if Torres gets injured. For all Manchester City’s riches, it’s worth noting that they’re only really a Robinho and a Jo better than last year’s mid-table team. It’s worth waiting until after the next transfer window to see if they’re worthy of the Big Four contender title – on recent showings, they are some way off, but are showing signs.