It started badly; the first five minutes littered with silly errors, soft free kicks and comical defending at set pieces, and it went down hill from there really.

Ngog opened the scoring in the 14th minute with an unchallenged diving header to send Skrtel’s knock down in, the corner coming from a typically poor piece of play from Stephen Warnock. Warnock was done for pace by Ngog, albeit blatantly offside, two minutes later and the Frenchman made no mistake with the finish.

Villa were lacklustre and listless throughout the half, struggling to string together more than three passes during any brief spell of possession. Their own worst enemy, the first touch was awful, there was next to no understanding, the movement was poor and even the bounce of the ball from 50/50’s didn’t fall our way. Nothing was working.

Houllier sent Delfouneso out for the 2nd half in place of Ciaran Clark whose 1st half booking means he’s suspended from the next one. It didn’t do much, Villa threatened to show some life, but were easily undone by a simple ball through the hole in the middle to Rodriguez who fed Ngog out wide before collecting the cross unchallenged and thumping past a helpless Friedel.

Basic stuff and a display of how simple it can and should be.

Carew came on for Gabby and Pires for Albrighton for the last 25 minutes, but Liverpool had long since given up showing any interest, secure in the knowledge that Villa were completely incapable of mounting any sort of threat all on their own.

There’s little to add. Almost to a man, Villa were atrocious, it was like they’d never met each other before or played any professional level football. Dire, incomprehensibly so. Worse than when we were beaten 5-0 on the same pitch, fortunate that this Liverpool side are a shadow of that one.

It’s probably too early for any sort of evaluation, but my feeling is that the changes being introduced behind the scenes at Villa Park are taking their toll and it’s simply a case of too much, too soon for this bunch of players. That’s just my guess, but they really didn’t seem to have the first clue what they were doing tonight.

I know where the finger of blame for that will be very quickly pointed, but the players out there tonight seemed to lack basic skills like trapping a ball. Without those sort of fundamentals, these results are inevitable.

Things look bleak right now, they really do.

Starting XI: Friedel, L Young, Warnock, Dunne, Collins, Downing, Albrighton, Clark, Hogg, Ireland, Agbonlahor.
Subs: Guzan, Pires, Carew, Delfouneso, Cuellar, Lichaj, Herd.

Liverpool XI: Reina, Johnson, Konchesky, Skrtel, Kyrgiakos, Meireles, Lucas, Kuyt, Maxi, Babel, Ngog.
Subs: Jones, Kelly, Aurelio, Poulsen, Cole, Jovanovic, Shelvey.