Liverpool look absolutely unstoppable after Champions League victory over Villarreal - The Warm-Up

THURSDAY'S BIG STORIES Worth A Shot Ad/> It is not, on the face of it, a bad idea. Liverpool don't so much defeat teams as run them over: you stop them, therefore, by keeping them from getting started in the first place. Slow the game down.

Get in the way. Frustrate the players, calm the crowd; just because they want to run around at a hundred miles an hour doesn't mean you have to. It's not a competition.

Well, it is, but it's not a race. Champions League'Give him the Ballon d'Or!' — Ozil, Ferdinand back Benzema for awardYESTERDAY AT 08:30 It's the footballing equivalent of hiding somebody's shoes. Everton tried it at the weekend, with extra shenanigans.

Lasted a whole hour. Villarreal, a better team with a functional squad, a proven manager, and this mysterious thing called tactics? They made it 53 minutes. Perhaps this is the risk a team takes, when they pack the box.

They make it harder for Liverpool to create chances for themselves, but it becomes much more likely that one of their own will toe-end the ball over the keeper. Pervis Estupinan's own goal was freakish in its execution, of course, but felt perfectly natural in the course of the game, as Liverpool poked and pushed and prodded; as the intensity wound up. Apply enough pressure and something has to pop somewhere.

After the game, Rio Ferdinand proclaimed this the best Liverpool side he'd ever seen. We're not going to argue with him, but it is interesting that he was moved to say this after a 2-0 win over a stubborn and frustrating opponent, rather than any of the thrashings Liverpool have handed out over the last few seasons. Partly that's a question of timing: the immediate aftermath of a semi-final first leg is probably the perfect moment to make a swing at