For the Community

Final score: Liverpool 2 Chelsea 1.

Sweet goal for Shevchenko, but sweeter victory for Liverpool. In my opinion, Liverpool deserved to win by more than that 2-1 scoreline. But I suppose when you want to compare with the Premierleague champions who spend at least £50million on new players every season, you can't be too greedy.

As expected, Mourinho started complaining about the lack of preparation for his team amidst 'praise' for Liverpool. Quoting from football365.com Mourinho said "...but if you don't think about the difference of condition of both teams they deserved to win because they were better than us." It sounds like putting an excuse to why you lost while praising the opponent so you don't sound sour grapes. And I was about to predict that he would whine about the internationals disrupting his preparations futhtur, but he already did:

"I have to say this is intelligent. They realise players should be with their teams before the season starts not with their national teams."(football365.com) when commenting that his native Portugal decided not to have an international friendly.

Anyway, we all don't care with all the excuses Mourinho makes about his team. The fact is Liverpool beat Chelsea. And Liverpool weren't playing their first XI. The only first-teamers who started were probably Reina, Carragher, Finnan and Crouch. If you want to count Pennant, go ahead, but we all know that key players like Gerrard, Xabi Alonso and Bellamy weren't in the starting line-up, while Chelsea on the other hand had the best squad they could put forward minus the injuries.

With Mourinho saying that Liverpool would have a psychological blow if they lost to a 50% Chelsea, then Chelsea must have suffered a blow losing to 50% of the Liverpool first team. Chelsea are still the team to beat this season - mainly because of their money - but Liverpool had sent out a good sign to the rest of the Premiership - that Chelsea are beatable!

I like the quote on soccernet.com: "Crouch's late goal gave Benitez another win over Mourinho and tightened his psychological hold. He has beaten him in the Champions League, the FA Cup and the Community Shield. Now for the Premiership."

It might be a "meaningless friendly", but they did do something for the community.