I’ve just landed at Dubai Airport. Next thing I do is switching on my mobile, but no messages come in. My mates wouldn’t let me down. I asked them to keep me updated about the goings on at Anfield, so after forty-five minutes the match must be still scoreless. A coach came to pick us up and I make my way to the gate, then take my trainees off as I go through their security procedures. Shortly afterwards I get a message in. Torres scored. A bit of relief, beats a massage after a seven hour trip on a plane. I look at the monitors to check which gate I am to board for my next flight to Melbourne via Singapore. It all turns in Arabic fonts and if you think Greek is hard, try that. The airport is dead busy, even though it’s their midnight. I stroll through a shop, it has all your classic polo shirts, but the price is as expensive as anywhere else in the world. Globalisation, at its best. I just go through the reception desk to ask which gate my flight’s at. The polite receptionist informs me it’s number 21, which now thinking about it is my lucky number. It’s when’s my birthday’s on and I still remember having that seat in Cardiff in the League Cup Final over the Mancs.

I made my way to the gate, with us still 1-0. Put my laptop out and tried to get some connection from the available Wi-Fi. I did get a network, logged on the official site, and the result hasn’t changed yet. Wigan gave the Reds a stern test in their backyard earlier this season. It was only a solo dinking effort by Yossi Benayoun that earned the Reds the three points. Pies weren’t exactly forced down the small town natives throats. Overall though, since Wigan moved to the Premiership, the reds always got the three points. And Peter Crouch broke his duck against them. In the meantime am through the e-season log in and get Steve Hunter’s commentary, helped by Phil Neal. It’s the first match I am just listening to rather than watching, for some three years I guess. I just try to visualize what’s happening without actually watching anything. It’s time to use my imagination. It feels like a laboured performance, that so far the class of Torres has made all the difference between three points won and two points lost. Being one up though am not feeling too bad. The hardest thing’s done. It’s much harder putting the shutters up than putting the same shutters down. The key is now in Liverpool’s hands and thus come closing time the shutters would be already half way down.

The weak connection gets cut out. Am thinking it’s the e-season ticket playing up and brings me back memories of trying to follow the commentary through a dial-up connection, at the same time learning the new word ‘buffering’. I actually re-connect and get through the commentary without much hassle.

Titus Bramble for some reason brings me memories of Phil Babb. Phil Babb probably got the edge over him in the one-time hit wonders, but over all the former edges him. It’s a travesty his one-time hit wonder actually broke him rather than made him. Bramble runs him well close though. Apart from the other embarrassments and indecisions, I remember him stripping off his trackie to come in for Newcastle at Anfield two years ago on a Boxing Day match. The whole Kop laughed and actually applauded him while getting on. It was not the Anfield’s usual show of respect reserved for classy players. No, it was a gesture of goodwill during the festive season, to someone who reinstated comedy into football.

Today, he apparently scores a scorcher. The poor comedian manages a good one-liner in a funeral.

A double save by the ex-Kirkland defies the captain, and the three points banked on earlier on. Dirk Kuyt and Peter Crouch are thrown into the fray, but the result feels already framed up. The ninety minutes are almost up and I’ve got to board in quickly. Pressing issues from both sides, a bit of a G-clamp actually.

With the shutters supposedly half way down, the usually picked on lad hid himself, sneaked in and helped himself.