Torres eases pressure on Hodgson

GERRY MARSDEN did his best to lift Liverpool’s flagging spirits when the former Gerry and the Pacemakers singer took to the pitch before kick-off to lead the Anfield crowd in a rousing rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

Under-pressure boss Roy Hodgson might have preferred to have heard another of Marsden’s hits, “You Were Made For Me”, given Hodgson’s need to convince Liverpool’s new owners that he is the man to take the club forward into their new era.

But it all worked out nicely for Liverpool, Hodgson and new custodians New England Sports Ventures (NESV), thanks to Fernando Torres. The Spaniard has had a poor season, with just one Premier League goal prior to yesterday, after his mystifyingly ineffective summer World Cup with champions Spain, but the striker looked ready for new challenges at Anfield yesterday and that can only be good news for Hodgson.

“Torres had a very good game and he will be very happy,” said the Liverpool manager after watching his side collect their first Premier League win in six attempts.

“We need him to score many more goals if we are to move into the position in the table where we need to be.

“He was very down when he came back from the World Cup... He was down as a result of the criticism that he took during the tournament, and what he has been getting here since the start of the season.

“I think he is coming out of that now and starting to find the joy of playing again. You can’t infuse that into a player. He has to find it himself and today I think he did that.”

Liverpool remain anchored in the Premier League’s bottom three on goal difference, but their display was a marked improvement on their efforts in the 2-0 Merseyside derby defeat at Everton seven days earlier which had prompted murmurs that the club’s new owners may have to think about bringing in a new manager.

Hodgson insists such theories are premature: “People will speculate on my position, that’s their job.

“But the new owners are experienced sports people. They run the Boston Red Sox. We have to accept that they know what they are doing.

“I’m very happy with the three points and very happy with the performance. It was a very good victory against a team [that is] tough to beat. There were elements in our play that have also been evident in the games we have lost or drawn.

“We played well for 70 minutes, The last 20 minutes, there was a lot of anxiety in our play and you can put that down to the anxiety of a team in the bottom three who know they are better than that.

“Their equaliser was like one or two we have been conceding. The ball is in the back of the net and you wonder how it got there.

“It did bother me, but what pleased me was how quickly the players wanted to get going again. There was no dropping of heads and that’s good for the future.

“You would not have got too many complaints from us if the referee had blown his whistle as soon as that second goal went in.

“I haven’t been looking at the table too much lately. I don’t know what catalysts are, but it’s nice to say that this might be one.

“We’ve got ourselves into a perilous position in the league. One victory is not going to provide the answer, but it is important on the way to seeing daylight at the end of the tunnel.”

Jamie Carragher’s freak 51st minute own goal threatened to earn outplayed Rovers an unlikely point after Sotirios Kyrgiakos had headed Liverpool in front two minutes earlier. But within three minutes the game’s spate of three goals in six minutes was complete when Torres escaped his markers and, in his former characteristic style, confidently sidefooted home Joe Cole’s near-post cross.

Rovers boss Sam Allardyce insisted Torres would not have been allowed to roam free had his usual central defensive pairing of Chris Sambe and Ryan Nelsen been available.

“We missed our regular central defenders today and in the end we just couldn’t hold on any longer,’’ said Allardyce

“When you come to a place like Anfield, you want to have your best team. We were far too weak to cope with Liverpool.

“We did a sterling job holding on in the first half, thanks to Paul Robinson, but we couldn’t hold on in the face of Liverpool’s threat from set pieces. We missed our usual height and finally we cracked.

“When I see their second goal, I see how we missed our two regular central defenders. Chris Samba and Ryan Nelsen would not have let Torres in there to sidefoot that one in. It didn’t need to be a great run from him, all he had to do was stay onside.

“Realistically we did not deserve anything, but when you get that one back, you start thinking you might nick something. When we got our first shot on target and scored, it put them on the back foot.”

Rovers’ poor league record against Liverpool – just one win in 23 meetings – never really looked like ending, though Robinson staged a one-man act of defiance in the first-half with a hat-trick of brilliant saves.