Liverpool nothing without Gerrard and Suarez

Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala showed Liverpool they were nothing without skipper Steven Gerrard and star striker Luis Suarez after defeating them in the Europa League.

Brendan Rodgers remained defiant despite their Europa League hopes hanging by a thread.

The Liverpool boss insisted he was right to leaves the likes of Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez at home, despite being criticised by the Russian media for playing a very young side.
 
Ultimately, a mistake from Sebastain Coates gave Anzhi a crucial win thanks to a goal from their giant striker Lacina Traore, but Rodgers argued his youthful side did everything else right.
 
"I don't think I should have brought the likes of Gerrard, not at all. That's disrespectful to the players who were here," the manager insisted.

"We just got punished for one mistake, otherwise the players who were here did fantastically well, and it wouldn't have mattered if those other players were here. It is just one of those things, and we will have to take from it and learn from it."

Anzhi moved to the top of Europa League Group A as they leapfrogged Liverpool with a 1-0 win thanks to a lone Lacina Traore goal in freezing temperatures in Moscow on Thursday.

Having beaten Anzhi 1-0 at Anfield two weeks ago, Liverpool surrendered a two-point lead over their Russian rivals and are now a point adrift after four games.

Chances were few and far between in a lacklustre first-half in which neither side quite managed to gain the upper hand.

Jordan Henderson should have done better when put clean through on the right and found himself one-on-one with the Anzhi goalkeeper Vladimir Gabulov, but he cut the ball back rather than shoot and the danger was cleared.

Cameroon international Samuel Eto'o had a chance to put Anzhi ahead towards the end of the first period as Yuri Zhirkov got forward and crossed from the left, but Eto's's first-time shot was tipped over at full-stretch by Liverpool goalkeeper Brad Jones.

But then Anzhi broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time through Traore.

With his back to goal, Traore latched on to a through ball from Mbarak Boussoufa, chipped, turned and lobbed it left-footed over the head of the onrushing Jones from the edge of the area.

Traore could have doubled the lead on the hour when he found himself in space, slipped the ball away from Henderson 20 metres out but fired agonisingly wide.

As the second half wore on Anzhi seemed to grow in confidence and took the game to Liverpool, passing the ball around with relative ease and frustrating the more muscular efforts of the English side.

With 15 minutes to go, Traore had a close range header saved by Jones and a minute later Gabulov was in action at the other end to keep Anzhi in front.

First Pachecho's shot from the edge of the area bounced off his midriff and he had to come smartly off his line to block Joe Cole's close-range shot from the rebound.

Traore then squandered another cast-iron chance, racing clear of the Liverpool defence and sliding his shot wide.