And here we are at the final whistle of Liverpool's opening game of the season, a rather disappointing goalless draw with Stoke City. I'm going to hand you over to John Aldridge who will summarise the afternoon's events. John?
Ah yes, thanks..well Da Reds just couldn't find a way past Stoke today. There were a couple of chinks of light in there but Shawcross marshalled the defence really well - the boys could barely squeeze a fag paper through the back six. The Reds were handicapped by the absence of Suarez of course and, let's be fair, crippled by some injuries to key players. I thought Sterling had a chance to nip in at the back post and put that half chance away but the ball took a queer bounce just as he was about to shoot. Let's be honest though, the ref was pretty bad. When the Stoke player was fouled by Gerrard he was riding around on the ground like a Princess just to get Stevie a second yellow card - and after the first one Stevie got for next to nothing so we were handicapped with 10 men for the last 20 minutes.
