Cool as ice! Fernando Torres strikes in injury time. Photo: Nick Wilkinson/EPA/Guardian

The game could easily have swung either way, and it really would have, like so many occassions this season when results have been so hard to come by. In the end, the quality of a top marksman separated both sides.

Fernando Torres latched on to a loose, some say lucky, ball from Benayoun in the dying minutes of injury time to claim three valuable points for the Reds. In doing so, the Spaniard also wrote the history books as the fastest player in Liverpool to nail 50 league goals.

Aston Villa had threatened on several occasions to break the deadlock with the speedy Gabriel Agbonlahor and a towering John Carew making their presence felt. An unmarked Stewart Downing even had an open goal to shoot into off a Liverpool mix-up, but he drilled his shot directly into Pepe Reina instead.

Liverpool too, had its chances to score. Dirk Kuyt was denied a valid penalty claim after being bundled over by Richard Dunne, and Gerrard’s looping shot was brilliant saved by Brad Friedel.

This was Liverpool’s first consecutive win since September, and in a game where 3 points could have gone to Villa in a disappointing season so far, fans will welcome this victory with cautious optimism.

Next up: Reading in the FA Cup, our realistic hope of a trophy this season, apart from the Europa Cup.

Captain Gerrard fails to lift the home side. Photo © BBC / Getty Images.

Here we go again, the same old Jekyll and Hyde syndrome again .

Well, try as he may, Lucas ain’t no Alonso and its hard to see how he will fill the void. Overall, we deserved to loose the match with our out-of-sorts display. Final balls were every where except where they are suppose to be. Bad first touch all over the field. A defense that struggled against fast running forwards.

We had our chances to draw the match, had we taken the opportunity to score. But looking at how we scoffed at the chances and hit the posts, i knew it will not be our day. I do wonder what would have happened had we scored with the early chances, then we would probably have settled down and controlled the match.

Lucas was doing okay until he unnecessarily gave away the cheap foul and headed the subsequent free-kick into his own net. Tough luck and a real killer to his confidence after a few good games from him. The second goal was another big mistake from a set piece. Pepe got a cheap yellow card for kicking the ball away in protest and i think that sort of made the whole team loose focus and screw up defensively for their second – not the best time to give away the second at all, on the stroke of half-time.

When Torres scored, i thought i saw a glimmer of hope but less than 5 minutes later, Gerrard over commits and gave away a silly penalty and that was it. Nigel Reo-Coker shouldn’t even be running in towards our penalty area in the first place, had a defender step up to close the gap after he had initially got past Gerrard. A rush of blood in to his head, and Captain Marvel lost his cool and lunged at the hard-charging Villain, sending him tumbling with a somewhat Villa friendly ref (i personally thought he offered not enough protection to Torres) pointing to the spot.

Forget about the money problem. The shit we see now got nothing to do with it. Rafa is right, the senior players need to step up and show what they are made of. Our margin for error is getting smaller and we’ve already lost 2 out of a possible 4 or 5 games that we can afford to loose, with 36 more games to play.

More heartaches coming our way i’m afraid.

Written by JonC

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