Liverpool - 0 Sunderland - 0 Losing, as Rudi Voeller once said, is a concept as well as a fact. Every Liverpool fan here yesterday, as well as Gerard Houllier and his players, may have been reflecting on that last night.
For the second time in six days Liverpool drew a game but came away feeling like losers. Liverpool had 21 attempts on goal to Sunderland's none. They stretched Voeller's theoretical definitions to the limit but after 90 perplexing minutes their primary feeling was a familiar sinking one.
Against Basle last Tuesday a 3-3 draw meant that Liverpool lost out on the second group stage of the Champions League. Yesterday they needed all three points to recapture leadership of the Premiership from Arsenal. They lost that, too.
So now Liverpool are not only a UEFA Cup team, they are second in the league and the upbeat noises of 10 days ago have been replaced by a growling realism. It acquired a voice following the 1-0 defeat at Middlesbrough and the hum of it accompanied Liverpool from the pitch here, although surely this was the wrong performance on which to deconstruct Liverpool's ability to win a first league title since 1990.
"I feel sorry for the players," Houllier said. "At times in the first half our passing and movement was brilliant. The outcome is as frustrating as when we played Basle here." Asked if it was worrying that Liverpool could so dominate a match without winning it, Houllier replied: "Not worrying, it's reassuring." It was about as positive as he could be.
As the statistics showed, Liverpool did everything but score. One goal would have transformed everything and it was not difficult to imagine Liverpool running up a decent total, regaining leadership and thinking their mini-trauma was at an end.
Instead they face another week of introspection and questions about Steven Gerrard's mind-set. Gerrard spent the whole game on the bench, John Arne Riise and El-Hadji Diouf coming off it ahead of him.
Neither substitute could alter a pattern that was set in the sixth minute when Markus Babbel side-footed a half-volley over from five yards with the net gaping. It continued through to the third minute of injury-time when Dietmar Hamann struck a clean volley at Sunderland's goalkeeper Jurgen Macho. A yard either side and Hamann would have had a winner.
Macho's next activity was to collect the man-of-the-match award, another indication of Liverpool's pressure, and the new Sunderland manager Howard Wilkinson was honest about Macho's contribution. "We had a plan and the keeper allowed us to stick to it," Wilkinson said. The plan consisted of leaving Merseyside with a point at all costs.
Sunderland started with Kevin Phillips and Tore Andre Flo in their line-up but they were not strikers. They were the first line of defence. Four times in the first half Flo won tackles chasing back.
"When I arrived he was like a baby giraffe who'd just popped out on to the veldt," Wilkinson said of Flo. "But he's got stronger."
With Kevin Kilbane relentless in his midfield running and Jody Craddock butting back as many crosses as he could, Wilkinson's plan was effective, but only to a degree.
With Vladimir Smicer roaming behind Michael Owen and Emile Heskey and Danny Murphy finding room at will, Liverpool built some excellent moves in the first half. But in the second they started to unravel. Opportunities were still made and missed but there was less cohesion.
Owen swivelled on a loose ball in a 70th-minute melee, Diouf hit Owen with a goalbound header five minutes later and in a final hurrah Owen and Murphy were both denied again as George McCartney produced a fantastic goalline clearance and then Macho tipped a Murphy header on to the bar and over from a Riise corner. Liverpool's frustration was complete. Sunderland, meanwhile, had their fifth undefeated game in a row under Wilkinson.
LIVERPOOL: Dudek, Babbel, Traore, Hyypia, Carragher (Riise 67), Murphy, Hamann, Diao, Heskey, Smicer (Diouf 67), Owen. Subs Not Used: Kirkland, Baros, Gerrard.
SUNDERLAND: Macho, Bjorklund, Craddock, Babb, McCartney, Proctor (Stewart 85), McCann, Kilbane, Gray, Flo (Kyle 72), Phillips (Thirlwell 66). Subs Not Used: Ingham, Williams. Booked: Bjorklund.
Referee: A D'Urso (Essex)
