Our last two league games were two very contrasting affairs. We played Man City at Anfield first, and totally outplayed them and won the game 3-0 with goals from Dirk Kuyt and two from Andy Carroll; we then played Arsenal, who battered us constantly throughout the game and ended up drawing 1-1.
In the Man City game we were the better team throughout the match and City never really looked like scoring, especially when Carlos Tevez went off with a suspected Hamstring injury in the first half.
We were worthy winners of this game and fully deserving of the three points as Man City gave a very poor performance, and we played better than we have done for a long while.
It was nice to see Andy Carroll get off the mark in this game, and his relief when the first goal went in was apparent. Once a striker gets their first goal for their new club they only gain in confidence and get better and better.
At the Emirates the game didn’t start well for us, with Aurelio going off after only about twenty minutes with a hamstring injury to be replaced by 17 year old Jack Robinson, meaning that the combined age of our left and right backs for the majority of the match was 35!
Apart from the first part of the first half when we had a couple of good chances the rest of the game was constant Arsenal pressure. They threw everything they had at us, the kitchen sink included but the only thing missing from the game was goals, due to some valiant defending from our very young full backs Robinson and Flanagan and expert goal keeping from Pepe Reina, kept the scores at 0-0. The game had 0-0 written all over it, until the last 10 minutes when everything went nuts, when Arsenal got a penalty which Van Persie duly dispatched.
It looked all over for us but we prevailed and ended up getting a free kick just outside the penalty box and then moments later a penalty of our own, which Kuyt smashed into the net.
In the end I think that a draw was a fair result, as a win for either team would have been a kick in the teeth to the other team, and we certainly didn’t deserve to lose with the way that we defended throughout the game.