The premier matchup of the weekend schedule in the Premier League featured two of the leagues finest in a battle to see who could push their way through to second place in the table and hope to challenge leaders Manchester United for top spot.

The home side Liverpool, who sat at second on 48 points, five behind United, were hoping to use the momentum of the 12th man to help see their side through.  With a very cumbersome first half, neither side truly looked the stronger. A late red card to Chelsea’s Frank Lampard on a nasty lunge against Alonso, allowed the Reds to truly set the stage for the second half.

Starting in good form, Liverpool were able to control the momentum of the match, having an astounding 70% possession in the second period alone.

After a number of chances from Israeli midfielder Yossi Benayoun and Steven Gerard, it was the Spaniard- Fernando Torres who headed past Peter Cech in the 89th minute for the 1-0.

Minutes later, again Torres made the most of a Benayoun run to the middle of the park and slotted the ball easily past Cech to finish the scoring at 2-0.

With the win, Liverpool stay second, though close the gap to 2 points with United and Chelsea stay third.

Peter Herrnreiter

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Premier League. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.