Well its been another interesting week for The Reds culminating in a decent performance and win at West Ham this weekend. However before we get into that let’s look back to the start of the week.


The start of the week saw Rafa facing a grilling by Israeli journalists over the switching of the Maccabi Haifa tie from Israeli to a neutral venue. Apparently they were incensed by what they saw as a big bad organisation using their position and influence with the strongest body in WORLD football to bully a smaller less powerful group with less powerful friends into submission – remind you of anything? To be fair it was quite a detailed and precise argument the Israeli sports journalist used – may be they should do a job swap with the nation’s political hacks.


Later came claims that Liverpool were too frightened to play in Israel – well yes we probably were – see that’s what happens when you start bombing the shit out of women and children! And before any wishy washy fucking liberals start having a go – yes I know the people they were fighting were just as indiscriminate in their use of weaponry, but we weren’t playing a Hizbullah eleven were we. Oh that’s it I’ve used Israel and Hizbullah in the same article – we’ll be monitored now by some shady, well funded, barely official US Govt. department – still look on the bright side ED – its more clicks!


With all that shite out of the way, the game itself got underway in the Valery Lobanovskiy Stadium. We all know ties like this are horrible, the away goal they scored at Anfield meant that until we scored there was always a chance of an upset. The first half was a pretty cagey affair with Maccabi offering little threat up front. Being goalless at half time meant that we held the slender advantage, but also meant that nerves were still on edge.


Peter Crouch opened the scoring in the 53rd minute to quell any doubts of progression. It would now mean that Maccabi would have to score twice to force extra time and the lack of ambition they had shown in the first half made that unlikely. However after the goal they had to come forward and that’s just what they did. Roberto Colautti levelled within 10 minutes. Then as the game was drawing to an end, first Agger had to drag the ball to safety to stop what looked like a certain goal, and then in the final minutes Pepe pulled off a brilliant save to deny Maccabi the chance to go into extra time.


Not by any means a classic and another injury to a defender that may have implications for the coming weeks – but we were through to draw for the Champions League proper.


And what an excruciating painful draw it was. I don’t mean the teams we’re playing, I mean sitting through the hour long "special" to find out. Fuck me – how long does it take to pull 32 teams out of a bowl – oh sorry – I mean how long does it take to pull 32 seemingly spot welded screw apart footballs out of what seemed to be 32 bowls? I mean the FA don’t get it right very often but Trevor Brooking, Ray Wilkins, a black bag, 64 balls and ten minutes seems to do the job well enough for the FA cup 3rd round.


As I say, the teams themselves were not too painful – PSV and Bordeaux were not as bad out of their two pools as we could have had – nor were they as good as others – see Mank Bastards draw!. However Galatasary were probably the ones everyone wanted to avoid out of pool 4. Never mind, at least it means a quick return to Istanbul to re-live that glorious night.


Click here to see the draw


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