Chelsea 2 Liverpool 0

I thought Liverpool played well today. I also thought Chelsea played well and that the two sides pretty much cancelled each other out. A draw would have been a fair result but in the end we were punished by a stupid mistake by a player who had an otherwise very good game.

I won’t waste time bleating about the fact Drogba shouldn’t have been on the pitch to create the opening goal after committing at least four bookable offences (three counts of simulation and the foul on Skrtel which should have resulted in a Liverpool penalty). Let’s be honest, we never get penalties against Chelsea in the League while Drogba cheats week-in, week-out and nothing is done about it. He is a man without honour or integrity and I can only hope Karma sees fit to inflict on him a really, really, really serious and painful injury to rectify all those he has feigned over the years.

Ultimately the game was won and lost in defence. Chelsea’s defence was superb restricting Torres to a couple of difficult headers and one decent opportunity on his weaker foot which sadly he scuffed wide. No other Liverpool player threatened. After the game, we are none the wiser as to whether Hilario is any good as we simply didn’t test him.

Liverpool’s back four defended pretty well and the team actually coped reassuringly well with Chelsea’s set pieces. Up until the 58th minute, you couldn’t fault any of them but then Chelsea did what Fiorentina had done so cleverly four days ago... They let Liverpool’s defenders have the ball. We’ve seen it happen so many times in recent years. As Insua, Carragher, Skrtel and Johnson nonchalantly knocked the ball about between themselves, the only team in danger of conceding was Liverpool. With Chelsea bodies dotted every which way in front of them, Liverpool’s defenders couldn’t see a pass on so rather than risk conceding possession, they passed the ball and the buck to each other. Had any one of those players taken a gamble and just launched the ball forward one of two things could have happened. Either a Liverpool player would have retained possession further up the field, possibly leading to a goal-scoring chance being created, or a Chelsea player would have taken possession and begun an attack on the Liverpool goal for which our midfielders would have been facing the play and better equipped to defend effectively. The one certainty is that had one of our defenders booted the ball forward, Mascherano wouldn’t have conceded possession in a key area and gifted Chelsea an opportunity to hit us clinically and decisively on the break.

Ultimately, it was Mascherano’s mistake but it occurred because for the second game in a week, four defenders weren’t prepared or weren’t capable of finding a pass through or beyond a tightly packed midfield.

That’s it. That’s why we lost. Had Torres taken his chance on his left foot, we might have snatched a draw but instead we paid a high price for not having defenders who can bring the ball forward from the back.

It’s not a case of our title bid being over. It’s a case of no title bid being made this season. I am worried because, from what I’ve seen this season, I think Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City are all better than us. Today we proved we can put in a performance and compete against the bigger teams but ultimately it got us nowhere.

The fact is, our defence is simply not good enough. We have played five away games in proper competitions (i.e. excluding the Carling Cup game at Leeds) and have conceded two goals in every one. Two at Tottenham, two at Bolton, two at West Ham, two in Fiorentina and now two at Chelsea. That is, in a word, shit. As a team and as a unit, the defence is not functioning. We’ve battered some of the minnows of the Premiership at home but haven’t beaten or even taken a point of any team likely to make the top 10 in the final League table.

It’s a frustrating state of affairs and it is only natural to look for someone to blame. Who do I blame? Gerard Houllier. What a berk! If that man had a brain in his head, we might still have had Nicolas Anelka in our team. Instead, Houllier took the £15 million the striker would have cost and blew that and more on Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou. In total he spent £19.7m on three players with a total resale value of just £3.5m. Houllier pissed £16.2 million up the wall while Anelka went on to inflict maximum devastation on us and not only by opening the scoring against us today. In the final home game of the 2002-03 season - the season after Houllier let Anelka go - Anelka's brace against us for Man City was the difference between us going to Chelsea in that season's final game needing a draw and needing a win. Having never won at Stamford Bridge in the Premiership at that time, we might have managed to play out a draw but needing to win after the 2-1 loss at home to City, we succumbed to defeat and Chelsea pipped us to fourth place and Champions League qualification. Then Abramovich bought Chelsea and since then they have been able to buy a squad that is the envy of most teams in Europe. Had Houllier signed Anelka, we would have had an excellent player in our squad going into the 2002-03 season and would probably have finished above Chelsea. Perhaps with Chelsea only in the UEFA Cup, Abramovich might have looked elsewhere – we’ll never know – but certainly Anelka wouldn’t have wound up in the Chelsea squad today.

I also blame David Moores and Rick Parry for selling our club to two dickhead yanks with no intention of investing the kind of money on our team that is required to compete for the Premiership title. First Man Ure, then Chelsea and now Man City have proved that money wins Leagues. That was perfectly illustrated in today’s game. In £13.5m Florent Malouda, Chelsea were able to bring a player off their subs bench who was better than £8m Albert Riera and, as a wide player, better than £9m Dirk Kuyt and £5m substitute Yossi Benayoun. Up front, Chelsea fielded two strikers, one of whom cost £24m and the other cost £15m. We had just one striker who cost £21.2m. For an additional £17.8m, Chelsea had two quality players who combined to win today’s game while our striker was starved of quality service.

The message to the Americans is simple: Give us money to spend and give us a chance of competing for the title. Don’t and we won’t.