Blackburn 2 Liverpool 2 - match report

Corrado Grabbi was the unlikely saviour as Blackburn forced a draw to prevent Liverpool assuming pole position at the top of the Premiership.

The Italian came off the bench in the dying minutes to head Blackburn level in a nail-biting match which had swung first in Rovers’ favour, then towards Liverpool, and back to the home side again.

Grabbi had flopped terribly last season, with two goals in all competitions, but the striker did enough in eight minutes to show why Graeme Souness has kept faith with him.

As for Liverpool, their 100% record is at an end and Gerard Houllier must have gazed wistfully at the penetrating runs down the left of Damien Duff, the man he tried but failed to sign for £10m last week.

Duff played a part in the opening goal, scored by David Dunn, before Liverpool hit back through Danny Murphy and John Arne Riise.

Houllier had left Emile Heskey on the bench despite his part in creating both goals for El Hadji Diouf against Southampton.

The decision to bring in Riise gave Liverpool a more compact shape and is likely to form the basis of Houllier’s thinking for away games, though against Rovers the Senegal striker looked a mere shadow of the player who so terrorised the Saints.

It also meant that a repeat of last season’s 4-3 thriller at Anfield was unlikely to be repeated. So it proved, but there was still plenty to admire as periods of cut-and-thrust were interspersed by moments of genuine quality.

Duff troubled Liverpool twice in the opening stages, his combination of speed and trickery outwitting Murphy, and then when he caught Abel Xavier dreaming near the corner flag.

On both occasions Jerzy Dudek game diving out to deal with the crosses, but in the 15th minute Duff, after bursting down the line past Dietmar Hamann and Xavier, made sure his ball in avoided the Polish keeper.

Andy Cole and Dunn did the rest. Cole showed excellent awareness to jump over the cross, Dunn steadied the ball with his first touch before drilling in low with his left foot.

As Blackburn’s self-belief grew, so did Liverpool’s frustration. Diouf summed it up, miscontrolling the ball and shaking his fist in anger.

Cole could have made it even worse for the visitors when he evaded the Liverpool defenders and hammered in a shot from a narrow angle – even though Dunn was perfectly placed – but Dudek was able to block.

As the first half progressed, Liverpool started to shrug off the fetters imposed on them by Blackburn.

Hamann blasted a 30-yard free-kick not too far wide, then Michael Owen pushed his way through onto Murphy’s pass but was thwarted by Nils-Eric Johansson’s superb toe-in.

With half-an-hour gone, Murphy finished off a Liverpool move of mouth-watering quality to score the equaliser.

Steven Gerrard fed Murphy, who produced an exquisite backheeled flick to find Xavier in space on the right. Murphy span off his marker and found himself in the right spot to meet the Portuguese defender’s return ball, striking the low cross first-time past Brad Friedel from 12 yards.

The canniness of both teams returned at the start of the second half, and it was some time before either side threatened again. Gerrard’s first positive run of note took him down the right, Riise attempted an extravagant flick but the ball flew across the face of the goal.

Gerrard was in danger of straying into the negative when he hit a pass straight at Dwight Yorke, Cole picked up possession and advanced on goal but tried to find his strike-partner – who was offside – instead of shooting.

Liverpool were criticised for being negative on several occasions last season, and Houllier’s decision to replace Owen and Diouf by Heskey and Vladimir Smicer for the final 25 minutes was not on the face of it likely to improve the excitement levels, even if the first-choice pair had failed to set the pulses racing.

Instead it was Blackburn who upped the pressure. Tugay’s ball inside the defence was picked up by Duff but Stephane Henchoz produced a blocking tackle to match that by Johansson on Owen.

Dunn blasted straight at Dudek after a short free-kick, but with 12 minutes remaining a mistake by Tugay led to Liverpool taking the lead.

The Turkey international surrendered possession with a careless pass, Smicer crossed high to the far-post and the unmarked Riise floated a header back over the stranded Friedel.

That should have been that Souness played an unlikely trump card: Grabbi, whom he had farmed out on loan last season.

Two minutes after coming on the Italian engineered a move down the left, Duff’s cross missed everyone but when Dunn returned the ball into the middle there was Grabbi to send a bullet header whistling past Dudek.