A tepid affair at St Andrews saw an organised Birmingham outfit hold a Liverpool side lacking ideas to an uninspiring stalemate. All the talk during the week had been about the fact that, during the Benitez era, the Bluenoses were something of a bogey team for the Spaniards side. Whether a 0-0 draw continues that trend of “bogey-ness” is one for debate especially given the fact that the gap between the two teams has shrunk over the past year. What was certain was that it was a game which neither team deserved to win.
Interest in the match was limited to fans of the two sides, those who had players involved and one or two poor souls who were scouting potential acquisitions for their fantasy line-ups. Unfortunately no one, bar those who backed a 0-0 and had a number of defenders in the game, would have taken too much from this un-arousing debacle.
A number of fantasy managers had decided to use the international break to improve their teams after indifferent starts and one player which a number of managers looked at was former West Ham and Charlton left back Paul Konchesky. A decent if not spectacular debut saw the defender replacing make shift left back Daniel Agger in the reds back four alongside Skrtel, Carragher and Johnson.
Konchesky’s forward runs were stuttering but promising and he looked solid in defence, aided by Birminghams lack of real width and penetration down the flanks. Nevertheless he seemed to do enough to impress the fantasy judges with a reward of 2 Bonus points. I can only imagine the judges must have him in their fantasy football line-ups as this reward was generous at best.
One thing that will concern the 3% of managers who own him will be that the London born left back was taken off after 77 minutes with a knock. But before any owners press the panic button he was able to walk off the pitch unaided and as Hodgson himself stated after the game, this doesn’t look too serious.
“He hasn’t played for a couple of weeks and he started to feel his hamstring a little bit so we took him off as a precaution and put Daniel Agger on.”
Remember to check back to Injuries and Bans to keep up to date with all the injury news in the EPL.
For those, like myself, who are considering purchasing the follicly challenged fullback at a cut price £5m in the FPL game, it is worth considering that the Pool have a rather tricky away tie to Manchester United in the offing. Patience on this one is therefore advised, especially given Liverpool’s shakiness at the back during the game. Bar some outstanding saves from Pepe Reina, Liverpool could have conceded two or three goals from crosses which were not stopped at source from wide areas or defended particually well.
On another note Fernando Torres again looked sluggish and a shadow of the striker which had been included in a number of FPL teams in previous years and of whom Andy had developed an unnatural obsession. The old line “Gentleman prefer Blondes” evidently didn’t hold true in Andy’s eyes as a wild-card shuffle led my fellow contributor to put him in his line-up. Nothing from this game indicated that that was a good move and it looks as if the Spaniard will need much more game time before we see the best from him again in a Liverpool shirt.