The first eleven matches of the Premiership had the knack to be eloquent. They were either a victory or a defeat. It was either black or white, there was no greyish areas, even though still there was a lot of room for discussion. Since then though, Liverpool recorded three draws from four matches, but still while there might be a hall rather a than room for discussion, the December biting cold wind and torrential rain like the five defeats in the first aforementioned eleven matches leave no proverbial fence suitable to sit on, as it’s too wet and having Blackburn as your opponents albeit being at Ewood Park, there’s only one side of the fence that you want to be at, come the final whistle.

The first half did too little for the travelling red army to warm up, as it was as lukewarm and tepid as a security guard’s sixteen hour shift at a forsaken warehouse. The build-up was either soft or slow, and when Liverpool did manage to get in their penalty area they found their Samba in no mood of dancing as he was solid as a rock and blocked everything that got his way. The midfield pairing of Lucas Leiva and Javier Mascherano is defensive by nature, but having Steven Gerrard in front of them, and Albert Riera and Yossi Benayoun on either wings should have more than made up for it. Sadly though, both lateral players were rather than anonymous using a nom-de-plume for the match and that was frankly not enough, with both making way for David Ngog and Nabil El Zhar respectively. The placenta treatment by the Serbian physiotherapist might have brought them back on the pitch earlier than expected but on evidence of today, this unorthodox treatment seems to have had undesirable whiffs, as outcasted these lads looked from their teammates.

Ngog has this season looked to grow in stature and if sometimes his strength and isolation have let him down his awareness of where the net is has more than made up for it. This afternoon though, with a gaping goal and a keeper in the middle of nowhere he only hit the upright. It was the only real open chance of the game for Liverpool and with the personnel available on the day, he was the one you would wish such a chance to fall on. It was a great penetrative run by Glen Johnson that paved the way for such a scenario but the skinny lad never took his chance this time.

There were half chances in between but a scoreless draw for the neutral was always a safe bet. The repeated back four and Reina once again looked as solid as we properly know them, with an offside trap working efficiently.

This was only a slight consolation, and the 500th match for Steven Gerrard ended up in the same way it started. Ewood Park was a never suitable arena to celebrate such a feat, and such a draw was too uneventful for such a milestone.