April 23, 2011 - Liverpool vs Birmingham: 5:0 - Maxi's hat-trick led to bigget league win since September 2009 as 5th place hope stays alive.

LFC Player of the Game: Maxi Rodriguez - the 3 goals he scored may all look easy goals, but Maxi is an expert in running into open space from deep. The "scoring midfield" is back to his very best form under King Kenny. Of course, Maxi could have never revive without a star dribbler like Suarez. Maxi had proved that he deserved to stay in the team to provide scoring ability from the bench.

Game Summary:

Since King was in charge, Liverpool had beaten Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City and earned a draw vs Arsenal away. However, they had not shown their ability to beat middle to low ranked teams. Finally, Liverpool had shown that they are ready to show their ability to beat teams outside of top 5 in this game vs Birmingham in convincing fashion. Liverpool totally dominated from start to finish. Due to yet another disappointing injury to Carroll, King was forced to switch his line-up by pushing Kuyt to play up-front with Suarez and gave Maxi another starting chance after his disappointing performance in the Europa League elimination tie against Barga. This time, Maxi would not let the starting opportnity vanished by scoring his first hat-trick in Red jersey. The three goals Maxi scored may not be great goals, but they had all been vital. Maxi opened the account in the 7th minute bascially set the tone for LFC. Although LFC aimed to develop the great potential big and small striker partnership between Carroll and Suarez, Kuyt had proved to be a more ideal partnership with Suarez so far. Kuyt had never been in greater form in his LFC career than now as Suarez had developed great understanding with Kuyt. They are both very hard working and make themselves available for passes by running into open space. There is certainly great chemistry developing between themselves with both always made good one-two pass with each other. With Suarez's dribbling and flair trouble opposing defenders, Kuyt was able to run into open space for a bounced shots. In fact, since the arrival of Suarez, players like Maxi, Kuyt and Meireles had all have great scoring runs. Suarez had made everyone playing around him better. Tribute had to be paid to King Kenny for developing great one-touch-passing/pass-and-move in the diamond of Meireles-Kuyt-Maxi-Suarez. The movement without the ball cannot be under-estimated. In the present LFC offensive play, always we can see Meireles,Kuyt,Maxi,Suarez made great run into the box, with all 4 offensive players kept moving around to different positions without staying in one particular area to wait for the pass. It makes the offensive plays unpredictable and opposing teams had nightmare in man-marking LFC attacking players. Of course, the current LFC offense cannot be executed without a magical dribbler Suarez. In the long-run, Liverpool really needs to sign another Suarez's type of player with dribbling ability and flair. Suarez cannot be depended upon like Torres in the past. We need a reliable substitute for Suarez.

Starting line-up: (4-4-2)

Reina
Flanagan Carragher Skrtel Robinson
Meireles Spearing Lucas Maxi
Kuyt Suarez

Goals: Maxi '7, '66, '73, Kuyt '23, J.Cole '86