Rafa pleased with performance and result

Rafa was clearly delighted and relieved by the performance today. Although he says he was expecting a win:

"I had confidence in the team. The team work hard in training and you could see an organised team trying to win until the end.
"The team is stronger but you need to win and then people will believe."
"The team played well, they were organised and we kept a clean sheet which was good. We have done the things people asked us to do, we played good football and scored two good goals," he said. "We needed the second goal and Bolo was fresh to come off the bench and do that in front of the Kop.

Rafa is not concerned by our misfiring strikers. He doesn't care who gets the goals:

"If you have the midfielders going forward and scoring goals I will be happy." "I thought the strikers worked hard and created space for the midfielders. It was an important game for Morientes and he worked hard, played well and gave us a lot of possibilities with his passing and link-up play."

Rafa elected to play to play Gerrard in the problem right midfield position and was delighted with the impact he made:

"Gerrard is a very important player for us and played well. He played on the right, left and between the lines today. Steven gave us options on the right with his crosses and intelligent running. It's a possibility I will play him there again if it means there is a better balance to the team."

The result today was massive. It was imperative to end our recent poor run of results. We still have two games in hand and if those our won we will be in the top six.

Please post your views.