Liverpool 2-1 Leicester City
A goal each from Michael Owen and Emile Heskey helped Liverpool to their first win at Anfield since April 21 on Saturday, giving the Reds a third successive Premiership win.
Expectation was high among the fans after back to back wins in difficult away games, with the performances in those games going down well with the supporters. And Liverpool enjoyed another dominant display against a Leicester side who have enjoyed a reasonable start to the season following their promotion from Division One last year.
Michael Owen was again on form and was unlucky not to open the scoring within 20 minutes of the kick off when he appeared to have wrong footed Ian Walker with a low shot from close range, but England's third choice 'keeper somehow recovered to knock the ball into his hands using his feet.
The goal did arrive though, just 3 minutes later and it was no surprise that the Liverpool number 10 was the man to put the ball in the net.
A run by Owen past 3 Leicester defenders was halted 3 yards outside the box after a foul by Gerry Taggart, but the ball ran through to Smicer who was brought down by the same player's desperate stretch to win the ball and Mark Halsey needed no second thought before pointing to the spot.
As at Blackburn, Owen confidently stepped up and placed the shot into the 'keepers bottom left corner.
Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen both could have increased Liverpool's lead at half time with each player testing Walker. However, the same could not be said for Leicester's attack, a their best efforts both resulted in the match ball being collected from fans sat a third of the way up the Kop.
Liverpool continued to put Leicester under pressure int he second half with Diouf resuming his role on the right and Kewell restarting on the left, after the two had breifly swapped roles towards the end of the first half without looking quite as lively.
And Diouf proved again to be the most creative of Liverpool's four attacking midfielders as he caused the Leicester left back all sorts of problems during the match and he would later provide the winning goal on 74 minutes.
By that time, the match should have been over, following missed chances by Smicer, who missed the target with a glancing header 6 yards out and later forced Walker into a good save with a fierce drive from the edge of the box, and Kewell, who picked up the rebound a yard out just to the right of the right hand post but Walker was quick to block the shot.
Emile Heskey had up until this point not seen a great deal of the ball in the attacking third, but he only needed one touch to double the Reds' lead, delicately diverting Diouf's fine cross across the keeper and into the far corner of the goal.
It was no more than Liverpool deserved having created another hatful of chances, while also shutting out the visitors with another solid defensive display.
One error was to deny the Reds of a clean sheet though, following Markus Bent's last minute consolation, and Liverpool's back four had to defend a free kick from just outside the box in the second minute of injury time.
The a fourth clean sheet in six games would have capped off another fine performance, but the three points were the most important thing and Liverpool are now up to 6th and just 3 points behind leaders Arsenal.
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