Despite all the talk surrounding the lack of goals from Liverpool’s forwards – none of whom had scored in the league in 2006 until tonight – the number of chances we’d been creating in recent matches always suggested a good thumping could be on the cards for someone as soon as we got a bit of luck and the goals did start going in.
I sure wasn’t expecting it to happen against Fulham. With Tony Warner being a former Liverpool reserves goalkeeper, it had all the hallmarks of the classic fairytale – Reds reject comes back to Anfield and puts in inspired performance to frustrate us. It wasn’t to be, however. Fulham’s woeful away record saw them concede three against Everton recently, and tonight it was five.
Indeed, it could’ve been more – Garcia had one ruled out for offside after just two minutes. At the time, that looked another indication it might not be our night, but then Fowler – who’s already had three ruled out himself since returning – struck the opener. When he first broke into our team, he scored five himself in a match against Fulham. Tonight it was to be his only one, but it was enough to start us on route to scoring five collectively (which I’d far prefer), and to bring his personal Reds tally level with Dalglish.
The good news was that the goals got spread around. Even Morientes – though he wasted a couple of chances – got his name on the scoresheet, as did late substitutes Crouch and Warnock – while Cisse had a hand in setting up two of them, even if he was the only striker not to score.
The relation between (not) scoring and confidence has been emphasised lately, so hopefully this good result will give all our strikers a bit more belief, and lift a bit of weight off their shoulders. With luck, more goals will follow.
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