How Happy The Halloween Is!

31 Oct 2006 Liverpool 3-0 Bordeaux - CL Group Stage

Liverpoolfc.tv - REDS THROUGH TO LAST 16 IN STYLE - The Reds opened the scoring in the 23rd minute when Garcia crashed in a volley from Gerrard's right wing cross. There could have been no more popular scorer of their second goal after 71st minutes when Steven Gerrard raced onto Zenden's pass and finished coolly to bag his first goal of the season. Luis Garcia put the finishing touches on a successful night for Rafa's men when he sped through to score his second of the night and make it 3-0 after 76 minutes.


Stevie: "It was a weight off my mind to get the goal. I had a few chances before and you could see I was getting too anxious. But I just had a feeling it was going to come last night.
"My form has been a lot better in training and I knew it was just a matter of time before I took it onto the pitch. The most important thing for me is always going to be the team, but I know if I'm playing to my best I can have a big influence on our form.
"I've been missing something since the start of the season. I've not had the spark to my game, and I definitely think coming back from the World Cup has been a factor.
"It's more to do with missing pre-season. You're never as sharp if you don't get the full pre-season training, and it's no coincidence as far as I'm concerned that if you look around Europe a lot of the major players haven't started the season that well."

And about the rumor of him leaving the club...
"What gets me down is losing games and hearing so much rubbish about me. I could go on for several paragraphs about what was written last weekend. We're all a bit sick of reading the same things. I'm sick of it, the players are, the fans and the manager is.
"I feel really sorry for the fans that they have to see the focus put on me again in those stories, but what can I do about it? I think from the reaction of the supporters last night, it's clear to me they're not taking any notice of that stuff any more and that's exactly how I want it to be."

Rafa surprised everyone by playing the same starting 11 who had beat Aston Villa on Saturday.
Riise: "When he told us it would be the same team as Saturday we just looked at each other and started smiling. This was the hundredth game - he couldn't be keeping the same team, could he? There was a great atmosphere in the dressing room before the game anyway, but this just added to the fantastic feeling we all had. It was a nice moment and good fun.
"To be honest we're bored of reading about rotation. We know what our manager stands for and we support him one hundred per cent. He's one of the best around, he's so tactical and so thorough in his preparations and he knows what he's doing. He wants every player to be fit for every game and it's just not possible to keep using the same players over and over again."