Masch it up

I love a big score, me. I love the sort of result that used to have to be spelled out, in those pre-Jeff Stelling days, in letters on the Grandstand teleprinter, just in case you thought it was a mistake. United 7 (SEVEN) Rovers 0. I love a right hammering. I love a cricket score. I love a romp. A rout. A goalfest. Merciless crowds chanting “we want 10!” Teams turning on their party pieces. Their opponents “lucky to get nil” and a hapless goalkeeper “wishing the ground would open up and swallow him”. The sort of result that has Norris McWhirter rewriting the record books.

The sort of result that, frankly, I wasn’t expecting when I sat down to watch Liverpool face Besiktas last night. For Liverpool supporters, this season has turned into one long game of Frustration. On a rainy Sunday afternoon. With half the pieces missing. Having lavished £20m on Fernando Torres, this was meant to be our year. Despite entering November unbeaten in the Premier League, however, Liverpool have frequently looked more unbalanced than Heather Mills.

It’s not about rotation. Forget the received wisdom beloved of bluffers like Andy Townsend and Mark Lawrenson (we’ve been through all this before with the great “zonal defending” affair – funny how everyone stopped going on about that…). If anything, Rafa Benitez has been too loyal to off-form players like John-Arne Riise, Momo Sissoko and Dirk Kuyt, although injuries to Torres, Alonso and Agger haven’t helped him on that score.

It’s about control. Rafa has a Gordon Brownesque attachment to footballing prudence. He likes discipline, hard work, defending from the front. Nothing wrong with that, but all too often, it has become an end in itself for Benitez’s Liverpool this season.

And that’s why it was fantastic to see the brakes come off last night when we beat Besiktas 8-0. The Turks were dire, admittedly, but Liverpool still showed a sort of flair and finishing that has been sorely lacking just lately.

Peter Crouch mocked Rafa’s curious decision to exile him to the subs’ bench in recent weeks by opening and closing the show, and Yossi Benayoun (or Benny Noon, according to the David Pleat School of Pronunciation) provided the sort of playground guile we lost when lil’ Luis Garcia left. If you squinted a bit, the interplay between Voronin and Gerrard for the fifth looked like a move from the majestic 1987/88 team.

It’s brilliant, too, to see Javier Mascherano, the man with the coolest chant in football (think his name sung to the riff from The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army) running the show. Roll on Fulham on Saturday. Nil-nil, then.loan payday orlanco 6 4education loan 401kdirect credit payday 7 loan 1011 loan advance payday quick 811 alternative 8 loan paydayabsolute lowest loan refinanceloan payday online savings accountstudent canada loan payday advancecollege aid financial loanalbert sloan