Rarely has the cliché about good goalkeepers being worth at least a handful of points to their team been more apposite. It wasn’t the saves of Pepe Reina that helped Liverpool take a maximum haul from a scrappy encounter with Wolverhampton Wanderers, however, it was his hitherto unseen ability to engender match-defining decisions that proved conclusive.
Players contesting the judgments of match officials is a given of modern football, but rarely do they race 70 yards to do so. That Reina did so when Andre Marriner, the referee, had failed to award a second yellow card, and subsequently a red one, to Stephen Ward highlighted two things — Reina’s desire and Liverpool’s desperation.
It was an undoubted turning point. The initial decision made by Marriner was to book Christophe Berra for a tug on Lucas Leiva, but he had got the wrong man. Reina’s intervention prompted the referee to take the advice of Phil Dowd, the fourth official, and belated punishment was meted out to Ward, reducing the visiting team’s numbers and giving Liverpool an opportunity to go for the kill that they, even in their present angst, were not going to pass up.
“Liverpool needed a break and they got one,” was the sanguine reaction of Mick McCarthy to the furore. Privately, though, the sarcastic applause that the Wolves manager directed at Rafael BenÃtez suggested that he was far from happy with the involvement of his Liverpool counterpart and his players in prompting Marriner’s change of mind.
The travelling fans made their feelings much clearer, booing Reina’s every touch from that point.
The morals of such an instance are far from clear-cut because of the code of conduct in British football that demands that no one should ever seek an advantage by acting in a way that would lead to an opponent being sent off. But surely that Reina and his team-mates stopped injustice from prevailing takes precedence?
Had Marriner not been forced into a U-turn, Liverpool would have been unfairly denied the numerical advantage due when an opponent transgresses not once, but twice. Reina simply helped justice to prevail and probably saved Marriner from demotion for his faux pas.
Beyond the moral maze, though, are the facts and the most salient ones are that before the sending-off Liverpool had toiled once more, while Wolves had at least one chance that should have been taken, when an unmarked Kevin Doyle headed over from four yards. But after Ward’s dismissal the home side took full advantage, scoring two unanswered goals.
The significance of the identity of the man whose goal put Liverpool on the path to a desperately needed victory should not be understated. It had not gone unnoticed that in recent weeks Steven Gerrard had not fired on all cylinders. Rather than providing compelling proof that the powers of the Liverpool captain were on the wane, as some have suggested, it simply demonstrated that even members of the much-vaunted Fifpro World XI are subjected to the same vagaries of form and fitness that affect players at every level. Gerrard’s header from Emiliano Insúa’s cross was the latest in a seemingly endless line of examples of both the 29-year-old’s desire and his unerring ability to pull his team out of the mire.
Yossi Benayoun added a second, with the aid of a hefty deflection by Karl Henry, to give Liverpool a level of comfort that allowed BenÃtez to introduce Dani Pacheco, a reserve-team player of rich promise, as a late substitute. The Spanish 18-year-old duly delivered a lively cameo.
Where Liverpool go from here is anyone’s guess. Three months have passed since they won consecutive league games and their opportunity to put that unwanted record to bed is far from a golden one, with a visit to Aston Villa tomorrow.
Reina’s involvement in that game could go a long way towards determining whether or not they take maximum points once again, only this time his contribution is likely to be of a more conventional kind.
