Well, we tried the diamond in midfield today, and it just did not work. Owen was starved of the ball and, since all the fuss for his 100th goal, he has struggled to find his touch. One effort today was blazed over the bar, and another chance went begging when a shot from Murphy flashed across the Kop goal, needing just a touch from him, but he missed it.

Arsenal went down to 10 men in the first half with Van Bronkhurst sent off for diving. But this poor decision did not help Liverpool. Infact, it only strengthened Arsenal's resolve. We went into "crap phase" and allowed Arsenal all the time in the world to dissect our defence with subliminal passes and allow Ljungberg with a free run into the box, and Dudek to bring him down. Henry slotted home the penalty.

Trailing by that goal at halftime, you would expect Thommo to get the lads fired up and to stop feeling sorry for themselves. Litmanen came on and brought some class to the play. But Smicer's arrival only served to lose the possession. His countryman, Berger, had most of our opportunities from outside the box, and one clear shot in the box from the pass of the season by Litmanen, but Paddy lad blundered wide on each attempt.

Arsenal broke clear again and Ljungberg added a killer 2nd beating Hyypia to a low ball at the near post. Shortly therafter, Owen misfired a shot at the Kop end , and Litmanen rose to head it home to give Anfield a brief glimmer of hope. But without any quality service from midfield, how are we going to create better scoring chances? Even more so, with all the talk of Anelka's arrival, who is going to feed him the ball?

We have not learned anything from the Barcelona game, and until creative midfielders like Dyer, Juninho and Overmars are brought in to replace the "blue-collar" ones we have now, we will continue to suffer the agony of these losses.