John Arne Riise made his second start of the season to replace Emile Heskey on the left side of midfield and scored a very goal goal.

Blackburn started the stronger team at Ewood Park forcing the Liverpool defence to retreat against their strikers. Abel Xavier had a tough match facing the prolific Damien Duff on the right.

After 15 minutes David Dunn latched onto Damien Duff's low cross from the left to open the scoring. A 20 minute spell of pressure from Liverpool forced an equaliser when Danny Murphy did a nifty one-two with Xavier before smashing the ball into the goalkeeper's bottom right hand corner.

After a slow start to the second half subsitiute Vladimir Smicer crossed a deep ball where John Arne Riise met at the back post to loop the ball over ex Liverpool Number One Brad Friedel into the net.

As expected, Blackburn brought on in-form Italian Grabbi. On 82 minutes a ball into the box was met by Grabbi who had sneaked in behind Xavier to meet the ball with a firm header which flew past Dudek.

Duff was the man of the match.