MELBOURNE — Steven Gerrard sent the 95,000 crowd home happy with a trademark goal in Liverpool's 2-0 win over Australia's Melbourne Victory at the Melbourne Cricket Ground Wednesday. The Liverpool skipper scored in the first half and Spaniard striker Iago Aspas got home in injury time off some Luis Suarez trickery, to seal a hard-fought win over the two-time A-League champion. Despite an emotional rendition of ‘You'll Never Walk Alone” by the capacity red-clad crowd prior to the kickoff, Liverpool struggled to dominate the home side — even though they were missing all their Socceroo stars playing at the East Asian Cup in South Korea. Gerrard's goal gave Liverpool the half-time lead, but it took until deep into injury time before they added a second goal after some clever lead-up work from want-away Uruguayan striker Suarez. New signing Aspas was there to score from close range off Suarez's pass with the last kick of the game. Every touch made by Gerrard was greeted with a huge roar from the pro-Liverpool capacity crowd. While Gerrard was hero-worshipped by the Australian Liverpool fans, a huge roar greeted Suarez sitting among the substitutes when his face was shown on the big screen. Gerrard made way on the hour, and then Suarez made his way on to the ground among wholesale substitutions in the 72nd minute. Suarez is a £40 million ($61 million) transfer target of Arsenal and he has made it clear he is keen to move to a team playing Champions League football. South Korea stays winless South Korea remained winless under new coach Hong Myong-bo after a 0-0 draw with China at the East Asian Cup Wednesday. Hong was captain of the South Korean team which reached the 2002 World Cup semifinals. He took over from Choi Kang-hee on July 1, vowing to instill more discipline. South Korea's opening match against Australia Saturday also ended in a goalless draw. China played to a 3-3 draw with Japan in its first game. China won the tournament in 2005 while South Korea claimed the title in 2003 and 2008. Japan faces Australia Thursday. Sunderland see off Spurs Sunderland beat a Spurs side missing Gareth Bale 3-1 in a friendly Wednesday that was cut to 80 minutes because of heavy rain. The Welsh winger Bale, linked with a move to Real Madrid, played no part in the Barclays Asia Trophy fixture in Hong Kong after picking up what manager Andre Villas-Boas called “a knock” in training. The action was delayed by 30 minutes because of the weather, and when it did finally get going the players struggled badly with a pitch that was unplayable in places. Tottenham took the lead in the 28th minute through a heavily deflected shot from Gylfi Sigurdsson that wrong-footed Vito Mannone, the new signing from Arsenal. Sunderland equalized minutes later when midfielder Cabral, another new signing by manager Paolo Di Canio, capitalized on a mistake by Tom Huddlestone to skip through the center of the Spurs defense and slot the ball past Heurelho Gomes. Former Manchester United defender Wes Brown put Sunderland 2-1 up with a thumping header before sub David Moberg Karlsson put the game out of reach. — Agencies
