Yep had about 2.5 hours myself, was so buzzing rang work straight after the match to say I was not coming in😆.
Sometimes when going to our games, with all the travelling I have to do on the day, that amount of sleep is considered a good amount. But at least you have nice warm 30+c days all week to compensate. Which was about 30c warmer than in Liverpool itself.
Since the 35 minute game in September, I was looking forward to the return. This is what the first game should have been about. A feast of high quality attacking football, lots of goals, tonnes of emotion and excitement, and where we would spend the post match analysis talking about the game. Unfortunately it would be deferred by four months, but better late than never.
Just when we were about to settle in, all my pre game optimism vanished when I heard VVD would be out. The idea of facing them without him was a nightmare. We're not playing again for 8 days, so why not take the risk? This was the sort of game we signed him for.
So we lost the toss and had to attack the Kop first half. But we flew out of the box and got the vital early goal. The opposition keeper has been hailed all year yet was shockingly poor for it. AOC couldn't believe his luck, neither could we. Salah should have made it two soon afterwards after selling them a merry dance in the penalty area, only to mishit his shot when he finally got free of them. You always worry if you miss those chances, and just before half time that showed. Karius has got the full blame, but at least he tried. Gomez was caught ball watching again, Matip put in a token effort that VVD would never tolerate. So we went in at halftime with no momentum and fearing the worst.
We needed a big start to the second half, and we came out flat. It's usually the time of a game when City start upping the tempo, they hit the bar, and we struggled to cope. Then Bobby put us in front and they froze for the next 10 minutes as we added another two. The fourth was my favourite, such a wonderful finish from 40 yards which ended up winning the game.
After the result in September, I was then chanting "we want 5", but it soon became clear that we would have to settle for 4 and try to see it out. With VVD around, it would probably have been easier, but we saw it out, and put down a huge marker for next season, and indeed an indication of how far we can go in Europe this season. We can go toe to toe with them and beat them at their own game, if we have to.
The atmosphere was top notch again, and considering the nature of the game, what's at stake, and the short distance involved, it's remarkable that there is no animosity between the fans. When AOC took his corners down by their fans, they all just stood there and watched him go about his business. There are no songs about tragedies, no missiles raining down on opponents, nobody running around to berate players. That's the way it's supposed to be of course, but sometimes it's easier said than done. I guess it helps when both sets of fans have a common enemy.
There were just 150 posts here after we won. We would have that amount per day if we didn't see the game out, as the usual sceptics would queue up to tell us how crap we are. It's only 4 weeks since they were reminding us that we were 6th (for 24 hours) and after 2 years with Klopp, we were making "no progress". Now we're on the brink of being best of the rest for this season. The table might change but some things never change. We just don't lose to City at Anfield.