Calamity Kolo nearly costs us but General Gerrard rides to the rescue again Fulham 2 Liverpool 3

Written by dedlfc

In a massive game in our hunt for a Champions League place Rodgers named an unchanged starting eleven which to all concerned wasn't a major surprise, and as most expected heading in, Rodgers kept Coutinho inside to help Gerrard and Henderson in midfield while Suarez started on the left. Formations and tactics, though, don't much seem to matter in the face of colossal individual errors which cost us goals.

With the adverse weather conditions causing the postponement of a couple of Premiership games it would have been understandable if either team had conceded a goal because of it.

Not when you have Kolo Toure in your defence, he is a master of creating his own colossal individual errors, with him inexplicably passing to the invisible red shirt in our last away game vs WBA, he has even surpassed that incredible achievement this evening with an amazing slice into his own goal without any pressure on his clearance after 8 mins.

Not surprisingly the goal energised Fulham's overall performance and they looked like a side with something to fight for for much of the first half. The shock of conceding that poor goal made our whole team look disjointed and dishevelled.

All this was until one of the passes of the season after 41 minutes with our Captain Fantastic Gerrard's outside of his right foot landed like an Exocet missile perfectly through the Fulham defence onto Sturridges's left foot for a cool calm finish for his 8th goal in 8 games since returning from injury and his 16th goal this season.

Liverpool were much improved in the second, with Suarez being the main catalyst for the upturn in our tempo but there were still concerns—along with Sturridge drifting out of the game again following his goal, Sterling and Coutinho repeatedly missed simple passes, and Flanagan had probably his worst game since breaking into the lineup. But, on the whole, things were beginning to look up.

After Suarez hit the post, though with a brilliant piece of individual brilliance. We were again punished for failing to turn that improved play into goals when Skrtel and Flanagan conspired to turn the ball over to Kieran Richardson in front of goal. The Fulham player hammered it past Mignolet to put the hosts back in front.

The goal seemed to finally wake us up from our deep sleep and soon after Coutinho pulled us level again. A scary moment followed when Maarten Stekelenburg dived to smother a ball just as Suarez looked to kick it, knocking the Fulham keeper out and forcing a change between the sticks with reserve keeper David Stockdale coming on to replace him.

In the end it was far, far more difficult than it should have been, but the stoppage time penalty earned by good play from Daniel Sturridge and converted calmly by Steven Gerrard gave us the vital three points we so desperately needed in a match where to earn anything less would have gone down as failure.

Man of the match - Steven Gerrard

Our wonderful captain lead from the front and his celebration of the winning penalty showed what that goal means to our campaign and that pass ooooh that pass, just simply world class!

Critical eye

Kolo Toure is playing too many games many due to injuries to other defenders in the squad namely Agger and Sakho. The only thing that he did of any note was the comical moment when he knocked over fat ref Phil Dowd when running back to defend!

As a team we need to defend better as we are having to score three goals to win games which we are very capable of doing but should be wary that to have a say in this title race we need to cut out the silly mistakes.

FULHAM (4-2-3-1): Stekelenburg (Stockdale 76); Riether, Heitinga, Burn,  Riise; Sidwell, Kvist; Tunnicliffe, Holtby, Richardson(Kacaniklic 71); Bent. SUBS: Hangeland, Kasami, Duff, Cole, Parker. 

BOOKINGS: Kvist, Riether, Richardson 

GOALS: Toure 8 og,Richardson 63.

MANAGER: Rene Meulensteen

LIVERPOOL (4-3-3): Mignolet; Flanagan, Skrtel,  Toure, Cissokho; Coutinho, (Agger 90), Gerrard, Henderson; Suarez, Sturridge, Sterling(Teixeira 82). SUBS: Jones, Kelly, Allen, Moses, Aspas.

BOOKINGS: Coutinho, Henderson, Gerrard 

GOALS: Sturridge 41,Coutinho 72,Gerrard 90 pen.

MANAGER: Brendan Rodgers 

REFEREE: Phil Dowd 

ATT: 25,375