Liverpool 4 Stoke City 0:FERNANDO TORRES did not say a word but Liverpool found their voice for this season regardless. Shoved in the back and bloodied from a clash of heads, the Spain international followed Rafael Benitez's warning to keep his counsel and received a reminder that the greatest response to intimidation lies at his feet, not his mouth. Liverpool's campaign lifted in the process.
Torres sent Benitez’s team towards a comfortable victory over Tony Pulis’s men last night, his first, early goal of the season banishing the misery of White Hart Lane. Seven times Liverpool were held on home soil by the lesser lights last season. Stoke were among them, twice, but with Torres and Steven Gerrard in tandem again and Glen Johnson making an immediate impression, they made light work of the first Anfield test of this campaign.
Benitez is keen to leave financial problems on the back burner for now, but supporters are not constrained by club politics and turned the first home game of the season into another protest at Tom Hicks and George Gillett, Liverpool’s credit-crunched owners.
Torres promised a blistering start in the build-up as he sought therapy from the collective and individual disappointment of White Hart Lane. He did not disappoint. Johnson, identified by his manager as one solution to the problem of rigid defences at Anfield, instigated the move with a pass into Lucas, who rolled the ball more by accident on to Steven Gerrard. Stoke’s two central defenders, Ryan Shawcross and Abdoulaye Faye, chose to close him down and so were powerless to prevent Torres scoring from close range when Gerrard pulled a cross behind them.
Emiliano Insua should have doubled the lead when Torres led a counter-attack from a clever, but ultimately poorly executed, Stoke free-kick in front of the Kop. The Argentina left-back met the Spaniard’s cross with a defender’s finish, however, and prodded wide six yards out.
Liverpool’s biggest headache of the first half followed an aerial collision between Torres and Shawcross, with the Spaniard coming off worse and joining Jamie Carragher as the second Liverpool player in two matches to require stitches in a head wound. A third, Martin Skrtel, was absent because of a fractured jaw suffered at Spurs, giving 18-year-old Daniel Ayala his full Premier League debut. The Spaniard handled the occasion well.
Johnson again demonstrated the attacking bonus he brings from full-back with an acrobatic finish that doubled Liverpool’s lead on the stroke of half-time, volleying home from close range after James Beattie had blocked a Dirk Kuyt header on the line.
The defender impressed throughout, forcing a fine save from Sorensen and intervening expertly on a dangerous Dean Whitehead cross.
It was a more long-standing hero who applied the glorious finale, however. Collecting a Javier Mascherano pass on his in-step, Gerrard spun away superbly from Etherington on the by-line to set-up Kuyt for a simple, sliding finish.
Johnson provided another assist in injury-time when his cross was headed in off the crossbar by substitute David Ngog.
GuardianService
LIVERPOOL:Reina, Johnson, Carragher, Ayala, Insua, Mascherano, Lucas, Kuyt (Riera 82), Gerrard (Voronin 81), Benayoun, Torres (Ngog 84). Subs not used: Cavalieri, Babel, Kelly, Dossena.
STOKE:Sorensen, Wilkinson, Shawcross, Abdoulaye Faye, Higginbotham, Delap, Whelan, Whitehead (Pugh 69), Etherington, Beattie (Fuller 62), Cresswell (Lawrence 62). Subs not used: Simonsen, Griffin, Cort, Kitson. Booked:
Referee:Peter Walton (Northamptonshire).
