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MOTD- Liverpool 4-3 Swansea City

By on February 23, 2014

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodger’s viewpoint of the match has summed up Liverpool’s season so far.  “We didn’t defend anywhere near well enough but once again the offensive side of our game was very good,” the manager said after his side scraped out the vital win over Swansea City at Anfield.  True, Reds have allowed nine goals in just their last five matches, but once again they got away with poor defending because of their firepower up front.  The four goals they scored tonight have made them the top scorers so far in the English Premier League with seventy goals, a tally they only bettered by one goal in the entirety of last season.

Once again, that goalscoring ability has proven to be pivotal, especially when facing an in-form side such as Swansea.  The visitors scored a hat-trick of goals of their own too, but as Rodger’s side have done many times this season, they scored an early goal to take a what has been time and time again a key separation to make their opponents chase.  This time, they even did it in spectacular fashion.  Raheem Sterling slid a wonderful outside-of-the-boot through ball in between the Swansea defense to Daniel Sturridge, who rounded Michel Vorm before cutting a shot back into the empty net.  Liverpool continued to push forward, with Sterling almost doubling the home side’s lead immediately, only for Vorm to grapple the midfielder’s powerful shot from the edge of the box wide.

It took them fifteen more minutes, in which Swansea had already start to take control, but eventually Liverpool had their second.  Sturridge cut in from the right, skipped by a few players along the edge of the box, and played it to Jordan Henderson, who took one touch to set up a shot before curling an absolute stunner into the top right corner, while Vorm didn’t bother moving at all.  However, Swansea made sure to quickly grab one back, as to avoid Liverpool gaining more momentum.  Somehow, The Swans scored in even more spectacular fashion then Henderson did.  Nathan Dyer cut in from the right and laid it off to Jonjo Shelvey twenty yards out from goal, where the ex-Liverpool midfielder spontaneously curled an incredible first-time effort in off the top crossbar.  Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet couldn’t even spot it despite the fact that he was in position to do just that when facing any other shot.

Surprisingly, the fanatic play hardly ceased, with Swansea, riding on the momentum from their first goal, equalizing in the twenty-fifth minute as Wilfred Bony headed Jonathan De Guzman’s free-kick from the left in off the head of Martin Skrtel.  The match seemed to have settled down a bit, yet Liverpool had none of that, firing home a third with just under thirty-five minutes on the clock.  Luis Suarez chipped a lovely little cross from the left onto the head of Sturridge, who rose up completely unmarked at the back post and lofted a header into the top right corner.  But still, Liverpool’s wretched defending allowed for Swansea to nearly find another equalizer.  Bony forced Mignolet into a sturdy save to tip wide the forward’s screaming low effort, before space opened up for Dyer to have a go in the thirty-ninth minute.  Dyer pulled the shot wide from the edge of the box, and Liverpool managed to hold onto their lead coming into halftime.

Liverpool weren’t so lucky in the second period, giving away a penalty to their guests just one minute into the half.  Skrtel cynically, and stupidly, tugged Bony down six yards out from goal, but that would turn out to cost his side, with the forward coolly tucking the resulting penalty home into the very corner of the net.  Yet just like Swansea did, Liverpool also quickly responded, scoring what turned out to be the vital winner in the seventy-fourth minute.  The midfielder grabbed hold of the lose ball on the edge of the box, and after Mignolet blocked Henderson’s original effort, the Englishman latched onto the rebound and poked it into the back of the open net.  That goal proved that once again, Liverpool can fight fire with fire.  And win.
Man of the Match: Jordan Henderson

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.