Liverpool need more forward thinking.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

This was a tight affair in which individual battles cancelled out the threat posed by each side's most creative players until the referee, Mike Riley, stepped in to hand Liverpool the initiative on the hour. The home side deserved their win thereafter, but the reality is that Rafael Benitez's team will continue to be frustrated by draws and low-scoring contests unless they learn to unleash their most threatening talents on the break, and play with a little more adventure.

This game may have gone the way of so many other of their other matches had it not been for Riley's decision to dismiss Frank Lampard. In my view, the Chelsea man went for the ball, Xabi Alonso came in late, and the wrong man walked. Up to that point the game had lacked forward creativity and imagination, with Liverpool content with two deep-lying midfielders in Javier Mascherano and Alonso, neither of whom commits to forward runs.

In that system, it was left solely to Steven Gerrard to break into the box to support Fernando Torres, but he was consistently running forward centrally and straight into a packed defence. Mikel John Obi covered his runs and, when Gerrard broke away, he was immediately confronted by John Terry or Alex, ever eager to intercept. In a five-man midfield, one of the quintet has to be given the freedom to drift wide and open up the opposing defence, if only to offer some variety to ...