Houllier praises Reds' maturity

Gerard Houllier praised the “maturity” of his Liverpool side as they claimed a 2-0 win over 10-man West Brom.

The Liverpool boss witnessed a frustrating afternoon for his team after Albion keeper Russell Hoult had been sent off and Michael Owen had missed the resulting penalty.

Liverpool battered away against a defiant Albion rearguard and finally won the points with goals from Milan Baros and John Arne Riise.

Houllier said: “It’s always difficult against 10, you find yourself facing two lines of defenders and they are difficult to breakdown.

“But we handled it well, with maturity, and we didn’t panic as the goals didn’t come as quickly as we would have liked. We kept plugging away and showed how to beat a packed defence.”

On Owen again failing to score, Houllier said: “The goals will come, maybe the missed penalty affected him, but overall he played very well.”

Albion’s run of three successive wins was brought to an end, but their boss Gary Megson was delighted with their desire and composure under pressure, but he had no argument with the red card for Hoult.

Megson said: “It was a rugby tackle, and a high one at that. He’d have got sent off in rugby league for that.

“But I was delighted with young Joe Murphy, he hasn’t even played for our reserves yet and we signed because we were impressed with the way he had played against us for Tranmere.

“We decided to keep a couple of strikers up front because when you are down to 10, if you have just one man up there it’s very hard to get out of defence and the goals just go in.

“But we made a couple of chances, (Jerzy) Dudek made one marvellous save and we could well have had a penalty ourselves.”

Megson was also disappointed his side were not awarded their own spot kick.

“On the TV re-run Sami Hyypia didn’t get anywhere near the ball and the only argument was whether he brought down Jason Roberts. He felt that was the case.”