Match Report 071007 vs Tottenham Hotspur: Now what?

2-2 and it was no until the injury time that Torres found the equalizer that saved us some face. We did OK in the 1H and was a bit unlucky not to be 2 goals up, but then two mistakes and we suddenly became 1 goal down. Fortunately we have Torres and he had a superb header that get us 1 point, which to be fair is a fair result.

Now there will be another international break and Rafa need to sort a lot of things out. First of all it seems the departure of Pako is really getting into the players' mind, and secondly we need to sort out defense. Sami is good but we can't expect him to play week in week out at the same high level. We missed Agger. And lastly, we still need to improve the midfield so that when opponents are putting everybody back we need to find some way to explore.

Players Rating:
Reina: 6.5 Can't do anything about the two goals, and at the end he seemed to risk a lot to rush out too many times, but fortunately it did no harm to us.
Finnan: 7.5 Never give up and at the end it was his lovely crossing that send us the equalizer.
Carragher: 6 A sloppy performance.
Hyypia: 5.5 Can't blame him too much, but he was really too slow and was responsible for both goals conceded.
Arbeloa: 6 A reasonable performance.
Pennant: 5.5 A poor performance and was always beaten by the Spurs players.
Gerrard: 6.5 Apart from a few nice freekicks, he failed to influence the team.
Mascherano: 7.5 Stepped up when we need him, and was unlucky not to have scored.
Riise: 6 Unable to have a big influence in the game.
Voronin: 7 His vision has lead to the first goal. Should have scored a 2nd and killed off the game. Tireless performance.
Torres: 7 Saved us some face from his nice header.

Substitutions:
Babel: 6 Didn't have much influence as we was expecting.
Kuyt/Benayoun: 6 Not enough time to have a big impact.

Rafa: 6 Have a lot to sort out during this international break. We just don't have the confidence to win the title.

Tottenham Hotspur: 7 Did well and will gradually climb up the table. They should keep Jol.

Men of the Match: Finnan/Mascherano. Raise their bar when we neeed them most.