Liverpool 1 Manchester U 2

Liver­pool 1 Man­chester Uni­ted 2, An­field Sta­dium, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Septem­ber 23, 2012. Man­chester Uni­ted came from be­ing one goal down to over­come Liver­pool by 2-1 at An­field. Ste­ven Ger­ard put the The An­field­ers in­to a 1-0 lead im­me­di­ately af­ter the re­fresh­ments at the break, but a goal each by Ra­fael da Silva and Robin van Per­sie saw Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s men emerge vic­tori­ous from the hard-fou­ght Pre­miership encounter.

Af­ter edging out Turk­ish te­am Gal­ata­s­aray by 1-0 in a Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue group sta­ge mat­ch at Old Traf­ford cour­tesy of an early goal from Mi­chael Car­rick, Man­chester Uni­ted locked horns wi­th Live­pool at An­field in one of the most an­ti­cip­ated der­by fix­tures of the 2012-13 Pre­mier Lea­gue sea­son. In the cor­res­pond­ing Pre­miership meet­ing of the 2011-12 cam­paign, the two gi­ants had shared the points in an in­tense 1-1 draw, wi­th Ste­ven Ger­rard find­ing the net for the ho­me te­am and Javi­er Her­nandez scor­ing for the vis­it­ors. The Mer­sey­siders had amassed just two points from their open­ing four ga­mes, whi­le sec­ond pla­ced Uni­ted had col­lec­ted a re­spect­able nine points from the same amount of mat­ches played. Bo­th Liver­pool and Man­chester Uni­ted knew per­fectly well that they were sit­ting on a keg of gun­powder even be­fore the der­by ga­me had star­ted, and as ex­pec­ted The Man­chester Reds were put un­der con­sid­er­able pres­sure from the be­gin­ning and had to battle hard to gain three points in a tussle which lived up to its billing as a heavy­weight clash.

On­ly sev­en min­utes be­fore the sound of the ha­lf time whistle, mat­ch of­fi­cial Ma­rk Hal­sey right­fully showed Liver­pool mid­fielder Jonjo Shel­vey the red card fol­low­ing a mind­less and petu­lant chal­lenge on Man­chester Uni­ted de­fender Jon­ny Evans that off the foot­ball field would have seen the for­mer Charl­ton Ath­let­ic play­er end up in a ma­gis­trates court. Brendan Rodgers´s boys nev­er­the­less went in front in the 46th min­ute of the fiercely con­tested tie when Ger­rard re­ceived the ball in­side the box and power­ed a low left-foot vol­ley pa­st Uni­ted goal­keeper An­ders Linde­gaard and in­to the net. But five min­utes la­ter, Man­chester Uni­ted ma­naged to hit back wi­th a beau­ti­fully curled goal from Ra­fael da Silva, and his equal­iser help­ed his team­mates settle down and cre­ate more scor­ing op­por­tun­it­ies for them­selves as the con­test wore on. And wi­th ten min­utes left, An­tonio Va­lencia was bro­ught down in­side the area by Liver­pool de­fender Glen John­son and Man­chester Uni­ted were awar­ded a pen­alty which Robin van Per­sie sub­sequently con­ver­ted to hand Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s si­de their fir­st vic­tory at An­field since the 16th of Dec­ember 2007. Liver­pool Te­am: Pepe Re­ina, Mar­tin Kel­ly, Dan­iel Ag­ger, Mar­tin Skr­tel, Glen John­son, Joe Al­len, Ste­ven Ger­rard, Jonjo Shel­vey, Ra­heem Ster­ling, Fa­bio Borini, Lu­is Suarez. Sub­stitutes: Brad Jones, Jam­ie Car­ra­gh­er, Jose En­rique, Ous­sama As­saidi, Jor­dan Hen­derson, Nuri Sah­in, Suso. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: An­ders Linde­gaard, Ra­fael, Rio Fer­dinand, Jon­ny Evans, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Nani, Ry­an Gig­gs, Va­lencia, Shinji Ka­gawa, Mi­chael Car­rick, Robin van Per­sie. Sub­stitutes: Da­vid de Gea, Al­ex Buttner, An­der­son, Tom Clev­er­ley, Paul Scho­les, Javi­er Her­nandez, Dan­ny Welbeck.

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