Swansea 0 - Liverpool 1 - Reaction

If there was ever a game that epitomised the cliché "play badly and win" it was this one. Winning ugly.... grinding out results... the sign of a good team. The clichés just keep coming after this result. But win ugly we did and a good side we are.

Perhaps ugly is perhaps a little harsh. Functional would be more accurate. You have to feel sorry for Swansea, they were much the better side in the first half and Mignolet had to make a couple of decent saves. But on the other hand, in a way that it becoming increasingly heartening, we still looked relatively comfortable in defence. You could look at the first half an hour as a decent side simply handling a good spell from a good side, at home.

We improved markedly in the 2nd half and Swansea began to wane. Worrying we still didn't create a great deal and it was a huge amount of fortune that brought about our goal. But here come the clichés again.... you make your own luck. Or perhaps more accurately, Brendan Rodgers makes our own luck. It was a shrewd tactical move from him to bring Gerrard on and lie him deep where he could both shield the back four, pull the strings and allow Henderson and Allen to push a bit further forward. Had that happened, it's not as likely that Henderson would have made the run that he did for the goal.

You also have to feel that had we not got that luck we would have created something to get the goal before the end. Sterling and Sturridge improved as every minute of the 2nd half passed. It was a shame that Sturridge's clever little effort at the end bounced back off the post.

I'm not going to go through and rate each player individually. On the whole I think everyone ranged from a 4 to a 7... maybe a 7.5 with mentions in dispatches for Mignolet, Skrtel, Sakho and Allen at the top end of that scale. Lallana and Can very much at the other end.

Gerrard's contribution is worthy of mention - you'd expect nothing less from a player of his experience and quality.

It sets up this Sunday's game with Utd perfectly. There is no doubt that it is a behemoth of a game... but strangely enough a point probably wouldn't be a bad result. Utd have an incredibly hard run in compared to us.

But we can't go into it looking for anything other than a convincing win and I'd like to think everyone has been saving their 8s and 9s for this one...

Tweet @AnfieldShrine