LIVERPOOL and Newcastle United should give serious thought to patenting their annual encounters at Anfield. Last night these teams again produced a game of football that few others, given similar circumstances, could have invented.
Just under a year ago Newcastle's flagging pursuit of Manchester United at the top of the FA Premiership was stalled when they lost 4-3 to Liverpool despite twice holding the lead. Last night Liverpool closed the gap on the champions to a point with a similar victory achieved by a somewhat different route.
This time, for the larger part of the game, the contest was almost a no contest. Liverpool led 3-0 at half time and so completely had Kenny Dalglish's weakened, ultra defensive formation been outplayed that a young Newcastle supporter hopped on to the running track and threw his black and white striped shirt at the visitors' bench.
The gesture proved a mite premature for after Keith Gillespie had profited from a mistake by David James, Newcastle drew level, against all the odds, with two goals in the last four minutes.
Cue Robbie Fowler. As the game reached injury time Fowler out jumped Newcastle's loftier defence to head past Shaka Hislop and send Liverpool's supporters into renewed paroxysms of joy.
While Liverpool have to be satisfied with exploiting Manchester United's defeat at Sunderland on Saturday, they will still have misgivings about their near collapse.
Yet while Old Trafford may have taken some comfort from renewed evidence of Liverpool's generosity as hosts this season, the performances of Jamie Redknapp and Steve McManaman remained a strong enough warning that the championship still has a lot of life left in it. Redknapp's passing and vision were superb while McManaman, shaking off his recent indifferent spell, pierced Newcastle's defensive cloak with increasing regularity.
The best that can be said about Newcastle is that having threatened for most of the evening to lose in the passive mood adopted by Dalglish as he shored up his depleted forces they ended up going down more in the cavalier spirit of Kevin Keegan.
Theirs was never much of a cause, not with Alan Shearer and Robert Lee missing and Les Ferdinand only appearing for 10 minutes of the second before his suspect hamstring once more gave way. For half the game Dalglish had Faustino Asprilla playing as a lone striker offered only distant support by Peter Beardsley and Lee Clark. After half time the latter pair gave way to David Ginola and first Ferdinand then Jim Crawford, the Irish under 21 international and former Bohemians player.
The drama was again breathtaking. Liverpool took a while to create a serious scoring chance. Then they scored in the 28th and 30th minutes. First Redknapp fed the ball to Jason McAteer on the right, Fowler allowed a low centre to run on to McManaman, and his shot curled inside the right hand post. Then McManaman set up Fowler for a low drive that beat the goalkeeper, but rebounded from the foot of the other post, only for Patrik Berger to score from the rebound.
In the 42nd minute it seemed all over. A glorious through pass from Redknapp left Fowler to outpace what remained of Newcastle's cover before slipping Liverpool's third goal past the advancing Hislop. But after James had allowed Gillespie's shot to slip through his hands in the 70th minute Newcastle sensed a glimmer of hope.
With four minutes remaining Ginola, gathering a rare bad ball from Redknapp, sent in Asprilla to lob James in a high arc. Two minutes later Warren Barton forced in the equaliser after James had parried a shot from Asprilla.
Then Fowler nodded in his 25th goal of the season, and Anfield began to steel itself for the visit of Manchester United on April 19th.
