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MOTD- Stoke City 3-5 Liverpool

By on January 12, 2014

It was perhaps the best representation of English football you can find.  Not only did it had everything, including eight goals, one from the penalty spot, one own goal, one header, one cracker, two tap ins, one curler, and one goalkeeper mistake, but the weather also added an effect, with the rain almost glowing under the light of the floodlights.   The only thing it was missing was the red cards that usually flood in when Stoke City are losing late on in a Premier League match, or any game for that matter.  But boy were there goals.

Only five minutes in the ball had already stroked the back of the net at the Britannia, as Aly Cissokho’s long range bomb was took a heavy direction off of Ryan Shawcross on it’s was past the utterly wrong-footed and baffled goalkeeper Jack Butland. To top it off, Stoke even managed to dominate in the opening half hour, yet due to a comedy mix-up at the back found themselves down 2-0 in the thirty-first minute.  Liverpool center-back Martin Skrtel sent a long ball towards the Stoke back-line, and although it should have been an easy clearance for Marc Wilson the Irishman sent his back-header straight into the path of Luis Suarez. After Shawcross also miscued his attempted clearance the Uruguayan forward took it around Butland before tapping home to make it 2-0 and take his Premier League goal tally so far this season up to an astonishing twenty-one in sixteen matches.

Yet against all the odds Stoke managed to start the comeback only five minutes later, when Marko Arnautovic found some space down the left before curling a delicious ball to Crouch, who had peeled off of Kolo Toure.  The lanky front-man rose up to his full 6 feet eight inches of stature plus the height he gained from the jump, and sent an unstoppable header into the bottom left corner from twelve yards out.  To the stunned silence of Liverpool fans, Stoke somehow even made it level again via an absolute cracker from the former Liverpool midfielder Charlie Adam.  The Scot picked up the ball thirty yards out from goal, and after taking it up to the edge of the box sent a screaming twenty-yard effort into the top corner to put home Stoke’s second on the night.

Too add to all the fun, there was even a dab of controversy in the way Liverpool retook the lead five minutes into the second half.  Raheem Sterling skittered down the right side of the Stoke box, and flopped over at the slightest of touches from Wilson, to which referee Anthony Taylor deemed a soft penalty.  Steven Gerrard sent Butland the wrong way with his spot-kick, and when Daniel Sturridge played it out to Suarez on the left side of the box twenty minutes later, the forward curled it around Butland into the back of the net to bag the goal which fans everywhere thought was for sure the winner.

However, Stoke were not willing to follow the script.  The home side pushed forward in search of another, and although Simon Mignolet produced a stunning save to stop Adam’s effort from finding it’s way into the back of the net in the eighty-third minute the Belgian goalkeeper failed to pass the test when an easier shot came in.  It was actually another shot from Adam, but this time it was a low, weak, bobbling shot from the edge of the box which rolled right under the diving arm of Mignolet into the back of the net to set up for a frantic finish.

But nobody expected to be as chaotic as it was.  In the eighty-sixth minute Sturridge half-volleyed Suarez’s lovely thirty-yard long ball towards goal from a tight angle on the right, and was only denied by the outstretched arm of Butland, yet the former Chelsea forward latched onto the rebound and volleyed it into the bottom corner.  Stoke refused to take that as a sign to let Liverpool take the three points, and one minute into the four minutes of stoppage time Crouch hit the woodwork with a near-post header.  Mignolet then came up with some heroics, somehow managing to tip Gerrard’s glancing header flying towards his own goal wide of the bottom left corner of the net.  Yet in the end, Liverpool prevailed and sealed the three points that takes them into fourth place in the English Premier League.
Man of the Match: Luis Suarez (he’s always the man)

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.