Football: Blackburn's new Dahlin the saviour

Blackburn Rovers 1 Dahlin 84 Liverpool 1 Owen 52 Attendance: 30 ,187

A First goal for Blackburn from their summer signing, Martin Dahlin, gave the Rovers a late share of the points at home to Liverpool, which kept them on top of the Premiership yesterday. But the man whose move did not materialise should have decided the issue before then. Steve McManaman, under inevitable scrutiny in the first match since his aborted transfer to Barcelona, showed all his familiar failings as a finisher when he found himself with the ball at his feet and only John Filan to beat midway through the second half.

Liverpool, in the lead thanks to Michael Owen's 52nd-minute strike and looking increasingly confident, should have been home and dry when Karlheinz Riedle supplied the reluctant Catalan with the ammunition, but as so often McManaman was firing blanks, his weak attempt at a chip allowing Filan to fend his effort to safety. McManaman could also have rolled the ball square to the waiting Owen. Roy Evans, Liverpool's manager, sympathised: "Sometimes you have too many options and you think about them all and finish up missing."

The miss left Blackburn to salvage something from a richly entertaining match as, with six minutes to play, Dahlin showed all the cool precision McManaman had lacked. Dahlin had been brought on as a late throw of the dice. He had already had one shot blocked by David James' legs when a move involving Lars Bohinen and Chris Sutton set up the last of the game's series of one-on-one opportunities to be dispatched without fuss.

It was one of those matches that left both sides feeling that they had done enough to win.

Blackburn, the surprise early-season league leaders, began with the greater self-belief and exerted more pressure but failed to create enough clear- cut chances. Liverpool, while making a nonsense of any talk of a crisis, were not at their most composed, but still managed to carve out the better openings. One of the best came when Riedle shot past a post when facing Filan and again when the German, having a thoroughly lively and impressive game, headed on to the bar.

The chance Liverpool took, however, was presented to them rather than created by them. Jason Wilcox gave the ball away to Owen, who ran through on goal from halfway. Although his precocious record marks him out as a natural goalscorer, it was not the most clinical of finishes, going through Filan rather than past him - but it ended in the back of the net.

Roy Hodgson, Rovers' manager, said: "It's the first time I've seen a Blackburn side go a goal down in a League match and we've shown character, determination and fight to come back and score a good equaliser. We all know how good Liverpool are at defending those leads."

Bringing on Dahlin and Bohinen restored Blackburn's momentum. Both had decent efforts before the Swede repaid the manager who discovered his talents in his homeland.