It’s hard to imagine how this game could have gone much worse. An absolute tanking. Our goalkeeper sent off. The online autopsy of our season will already be earnestly under way. I shudder to think about the comments floating around the interwebz right now.

I’ve mentioned it several times, but the only hope I saw of getting something from this tie was complacency from Liverpool after their impressive wins over Madrid and Man Utd. No such luck and this sort of scoreline was always likely in that case.

There’s little point doing an actual review of the game. Despite having a decent foot in the game for most of the first half we went into the break 3-0 down. In fairness, we could have had a couple ourselves, but the difference was Liverpool finished their chances and Villa didn’t.

If the first half was a disaster then the second was a travesty. An early Villa goal might have exposed some cracks in the Liverpool team. Instead, Liverpool took the scoreline to 4-0 and the game was dead. The fifth was the final nail in the coffin in more ways than one. Even the most ardent of Liverpool supporters would surely concede that Brad Friedel’s red card was harsh. Hopefully MON will appeal, but a 3 match ban will be cruel to say the least.

Perhaps in years to come Brad Guzan will be our established number one and we’ll look back with wistful smiles at his Premiership debut… his first touch of a Premiership match ball was picking it out of the net after Gerrard’s penalty in front of The Kop. As it stands, his full starting debut in the Premiership is likely to be at Old Trafford. Talk about being thrown into the lion’s den.

So next up is the small matter of a trip to Old Trafford. Expectations will be suitably low. There’s plenty of points to be won in the final 6 or 7 games, but what sort of shape the team will be in mentally remains to be seen. If we can come away from the next game without conceding a shed load of goals it will feel like a victory for me and something that can be built upon for the run in. A repeat of today’s scoreline and you can stick a fork in us, we’ll be done.