Sign of the times for sad Rovers

IF Liverpool ever wanted to replace the famous 'This Is Anfield' sign that greets the players onto the pitch, yesterday certainly threw up some new alternatives.

When Blackburn Rovers emerged from the changing rooms perhaps a more appropriate three-word message for them would have been 'Welcome To Hell'.

Or, with a bit of extra paint, the sign-writers could even have stretched to 'Turn Round And Go Home Now To Spare Yourselves The Embarrassment'.

Because Blackburn might as well have not bothered crossing the whitewash such was the sheer anonymity of their performance.

That route onto the pitch is one Graeme Souness has trodden many times during an illustrious career, which shone most gloriously in his days as a Liverpool legend.

The Blackburn boss is one man who certainly doesn't need a sign in the tunnel to tell him which ground he's at, but rarely can there have been such carnage waiting for him at the end of it as there was yesterday.

Rovers, now hovering perilously close to the bottom three, looked like condemned men from the start and Liverpool put them out of their misery pretty swiftly with three goals in a torturous opening 24 minutes.

There was no need for a similar betting frenzy that was going on down the road at Aintree a day earlier - this was a one-horse race from the off.

Like the Grand National, if you clear the early hurdles and stay in the hunt you're in with a chance. But Rovers fell in spectacular style after only six minutes when Michael Owen steered in the first of his two goals.

Bets were all off when Andy Todd sliced into his own net halfway through the first half and just two minutes later the Reds strode masterfully into the winners' enclosure when Owen crashed in his second.

And the only way a three-goal difference between the teams could be seen as unjust was that Liverpool could have been even further ahead.

Steven Gerrard, as you might expect, was as dominant over Tugay and Garry Flitcroft as the Radio City tower is over the Liverpool skyline.

But while England's latest captain has suffered a lack of similar performances from his team-mates this season, there were no such problems here as the men in blue and white allowed them all to come into their own.

Even those turgid under-achievers El-Hadji Diouf and Emile Heskey ran Rovers ragged, with the latter slotting in the fourth with 11 minutes left - the 11th his team have managed in three games against Rovers this season.

So the optimists among us could argue that Liverpool are some sort of bogey team.

But unlike those previous two meetings, Blackburn have no comfort blanket stuffed with ready-made excuses to cling on to this time. No sending off. No dodgy penalties. No bad luck in front of goal.

This was, quite simply, men again boys. Dads v Lads. Only more one-sided.

Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, and the fact that Souness was reduced to taking off Garry Flitcroft at half-time to prevent him getting another booking summed up the visitors' surrender.

Andy Cole, a man who has scored more Premiership goals against Liverpool than any other was left on the bench, leaving the raw partnership of Paul Gallagher and Jonathan Stead to feed off scraps up front.

It was Stead who managed Blackburn's only shot on target, but even this didn't come until after the 90 minutes were up.

It's almost as if this game was being written off as a guaranteed no-pointer, but with a genuine six-pointer at Leeds looming on Saturday, improvement has to be as quick as it is compulsory.

The early warning signs flashed up in the third minute when Gerrard shook off Flitcroft only to be denied by a great block from Craig Short.

Friedel held a header by Heskey, before the same player took Harry Kewell's pass and drew both Short and Todd away from Owen who, when the pass arrived, was free to slide the ball in despite Friedel's touch.

Two minutes later Heskey put Owen clear again and Gerrard should also have scored before Todd showed them both how it should be done when he diverted Diouf's cross into the corner of his own net.

Brett Emerton tried to reply immediately with a drive that flew over but no-one was fooled into thinking that any resurgence was on the cards when Liverpool struck again two minutes later.

The defence was nowhere as Diouf collected a throw in and squared for Owen, who made a mockery of suggestions he's going through a bad patch by flashing the ball into the top corner.

Heskey, Kewell and Gerrard could all have made it worse before the break, and there was no relenting in the second half.

Heskey may have scored the only goal, but a combination of Friedel and wild finishing from Danny Murphy and Milan Baros prevented the Anfield scoreboard from being accurate.

An electrical fault meant the scoreline that flashed up in the final 10 minutes was 9-0. While it wasn't that bad, for one set of fans in the corner of the ground, it sure felt like it.