EPL Round 4: Sunderland AFC vs Liverpool FC

By: Lucas | August 25th, 2007

I don’t know how much of a “live blog” post this will be, but I will try my best. I’ve been up all night volunteering for a relay race called Hood To Coast (I have a friend who runs in it), and for the past 5 hours I’ve been standing in a parking lot in some small town doing…well doing jack shit really.

In any event, Sunderland kick off against Liverpool in about 15 minutes, and for as long as I’m awake I will put updates here. After last weekend’s embarrassing loss at Wigan, I expect Keane’s boys to play with a lot more fire and purpose; but obviously Liverpool is a very tough opponent, so any positive result will be hard to come by. And missing our captain Dean Whitehead (out for a month or more with a knee injury) won’t help either; though it appears Steven Gerrard is not on the squad for LFC today (he played midweek for England, and is carrying a hairline fracture to his toe). Can Michael Chopra continue his fine start to the season and put one in against one of the EPL’s “Top Four?” This is easily the most difficult game of the young season for SAFC.

And we are off.

Halftime Sunderland 0:1 Liverpool – Liverpool is dominating the game right now and deserves the lead they have. Keane will need to light a serious fire under his players’ collective ass if Sunderland are to have any chance to come away with points from this one. One pivotal offensive starter is already off, with Kieran Richardson picking up some kind of back injury. I’m fading fast and started dozing at the end of that half; my exhaustion might prevent me from witnessing the rest of this match. I will attempt to fight the good fight against insidious Morpheus. Or maybe not.

45′ (+3) – Craig Gordon almost gifts up a crap goal to Ferdando Torres, but pounces on his own mishandled ball and keeps Sunderland in it.

37′ – GOAL Liverpool Momo Sissoko with a nice strike into the lower right. This may be a long game.

24′ - less than 5 minutes on and Stokes threatens the goal, forcing Reina to make his first save of the day.

20′ - oh my it looks like one of those days – Kieran Richardson has also picked up an injury and has been subbed off for striker Anthony Stokes. I haven’t been able to watch any of the match so far, so I have no idea what these injuries are.

15′ - only a quarter of an hour and Liverpool already have taken 5 shots (3 by Alonso). Possession looks to be all Liverpool right now.

Sami Hyypia is subbed off for injury, replaced by Agger. No idea what it could be, or how serious, but I never like seeing injuries.