International hangover: No Gerrard & no Carra = no win for England

By: Brian | August 23rd, 2007

I can only laugh. As much as most fellow England fans take any chance to slag off on the scousers, we certainly needed them yesterday as England was embarrassed at New Wembley, 1-2, by a makeshift Germany squad. I hope this spells the beginning of the end for Paul Robinson who was simply shocking in net. I have little doubts that either current Liverpool-loaned-to-Aston-Villa keeper Scott Carson or former Liverpool keep David James would have at least stopped that first goal. The second one Robinson was caught well out of position, but it would have been a Herculean task to prevent it. Great keepers do that though and what we’ve learned time and time again is that Robinson is rubbish.

Let’s see, Beckham? Check. Terry? Check. Lampard? Check, and might I add that his goal was impressive yet he seemed to relatively disappear after that. I guess Fatty Frank also heard that the food at the New Wembley is pretty good and seeing how overpaid he is, in his price range. It was quite evident that this team lacked the kind of world class ability that scousers Gerrard and Rooney would have provided. At times it seemed they couldn’t put a meat pie in Fat Frank’s mouth using their hands, yet alone put the ball in the back of the net.

In other Liverpool players International action, despite praise from the official site, Riise did not have a great game for Norway against Javier Mascherano and the Albicelestes. In fact, Riise won a very questionable penalty from his fellow teammate by basically diving in the box after Javi kicked the ball away from him and he had no chance of making a play. Mascherano, on the other hand, was quite impressive at times, including a lot of fancy footwork against the Norwegians.

The only Liverpool player to score on the day was Dirk Kuyt, who came on for Holland in the second half and scored the only goal for his country in their 1-2 loss at Switzerland. Ryan Babel also played in this match.

All 15 called-up except Scott Carson (how ironic is that?) LFC players played some minutes for his country with Pepe Reina, Sammi Hyypia, and Daniel Agger playing full matches. Why Daniel Agger played the full 90 is a mystery to me, his team lost at home 4-0 to Steve Finnan and the Irish. Seems to me a manager would take out his star players as not to risk injury, especially after his side went down 3-0 in the 54th minute. With Agger and Hyypia now fatigued, who are we going to start alongside Jamie Carragher at centre back on Saturday at Sunderland? Arbeloa?

Anyhow, overall not a good day for our internationals and a boring day at that. Hopefully the boys will take out their frustrations on the Black Cats. Cheers.

Would you like to take over for me and write the Liverpool blog here at the Offside? If so, please contact Bob (bob [at] the offside.com) or click on the ‘Write for the Offside’ box in the upper right corner of the page. Cheers.

Going to the Liverpool game? Find out how to get to Liverpool and where to stay near Anfield.
Buy tickets to Liverpool games.