Horse 1319 - Everton Sees Red - Liverpool 2 - Everton 1

Liverpool 2 - Everton 1

Jelavic - 24' (EVE)
Suárez - 62' (LIV)
Carroll - 87' (LIV)

Only three teams have ever taken a domestic cup double in England and one of them was Liverpool. Today's victory against Everton has booked them a place in the final to give them a chance at doing it again. The win though was not pretty, not easy and I think not very impressive either.

All three goals came from either a mistake or a dead ball situation. Nikica Jelavic's 24th minute opener as a result of Jamie Carragher's blunder and rebound off Tim Cahill, Luis Suárez' 62nd minute effort by a lapse in concentration from the defence, and Andy Carroll only headed in a free-kick from Craig Bellamy in the 87th minute after having more shots than a gunfight in Merrylands and missing all of them.
Really all that Liverpool can hope to take away from this match is that they gritted their way through 90 minutes and came out the other side. Whilst this works somewhat well in Cup Ties, their current 8th position definitely says that they're not really fit for Champions League football, let alone hoping for a tilt at the league title itself. Based on today's performance, they are worth no better than that 8th place suggests.

One of the basic things to master as a player in the game of football is to pass the ball to someone in the same coloured shirt as you; there was precious little of that from either side today. Liverpool especially seems to have reverted to an ancient King Kenny Dalglish tactic of firing the ball up the centre of the park on Route 1, finding a big player and shuffling it onto a little player. That's fine and dandy if the year happens to be 1971 but the passing of 40 years has long since made this sort o thing hideously outdated and Everton were consistently able to prize the Liverpool defence apart, coming back the other way on the counter-attack, like opening a walnut.

Defensively Liverpool are probably fine but the problem is at the other end. Liverpool in the league have only managed to score 40 goals. Relegation placed Blackburn Rovers (19th) have managed to score 45. Andy Carroll himself who was bought for a Liverpool record of £35m has only scored 4. Four. To put this in perspective, Cristiano "Poo Boots" Ronaldo scored 40 goals in 2010-11. That means to say that last year Ronaldo single handedly scored as many goals as the entire Liverpool squad has done this season.
I hope that Liverpool comes out to play against which ever London club they happen to draw in the Cup Final but based on this performance, they won't be good enough to even score let alone win.