Both Liverpool and Wolves came into yesterday's match at Anfield on a down run of form following bright starts to the new Premier League season. For Liverpool, this was about trying to keep pace with the 2 Manchester clubs and Chelsea, for Wolves, 3 points was needed in order to avoid a continued tumble down the table.
Wolves got things off to a great start in the first 5 minutes. They had a lot of possession and seemed to put Liverpool on their heels a bit. Their nice play culminated in a good free kick chance just outside the 18. However, O'Hara blasted it into the wall and then picked up a yellow for pulling a Liverpool player down on the ensuing counter attempt.
The bad news for Wolves was the first half got progressively worse after that. In the 11th minute Captain Roger Johnson was trying to defend a ball in when he got bulldozed by Andy Carroll. The ball fluttered over to Charlie Adam, who smacked it toward goal. Johnson tried to get up and defend it, but he ended up deflecting it into his own goal to hand Liverpool the 1-0 lead. He tried to argue that he should have had a free kick against Carroll, but the ref wasn't buying. Then in the 38th minute Luis Suarez appeared to put the icing on the cake by slicing a brilliant goal in from an angle to give Liverpool a 2-0 lead at the half.
However if Liverpool thought Wolves were going to come out and roll over, they were wrong. Fletcher entered at half time and scored a goal for Wolves in the 49th minute to make it 2-1. Wolves were hunting a point.
The rest of the game turned into a pretty entertaining, wide open affair, but most of the quality chances went to Liverpool. Hennessey just managed to deny Suarez a brace in the 50th, then in the 52nd Carroll had a header clang off the post. Just one minute later, Downing nearly struck off of a counter, but again Hennessey made a great save to keep Wolves in it. Unfortunately for them, they could never quite threaten the equalizer, and Liverpool took the win 2-1.
On a side note, Steven Gerrard played the last 10 minutes or so for Liverpool and looked pretty sharp. This was on the heels of his Carling Cup run out earlier in the week.
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