Liverpool FC Forum

Ciggy wrote:TEAM IS

Reina
skrtel, hyypia, riise, carragher, babel, kuyt, gerrard, alonso, lucas and torres

thanks for that info ciggy!
i"d of loved it though if crouch was starting
as i still think that this game is made for him!
his presence in the box from set play, corners etc
would & still can be if he comes on at some point
during the game.
that aside like you say let"s just give these bitter
a lesson today!
               all i want is 3 points today,
  COME ON YOU MIGHTY REDS!

The_Rock wrote:

Ciggy wrote:TEAM IS

Reina
skrtel, hyypia, riise, carragher, babel, kuyt, gerrard, alonso, lucas and torres

Ah well......he picks kuyt again.....

bigmick wrote:Feck it, woke up and got out of bed only to discover I've still got an hour to kill. I'm gonna be absolutely coma'd tomorrow. Ah well. I like the team to be honest. Only change to the top six is the forced inclusion of Lucas for Masherano, while Hyppia was pretty much always going to play as Everton will be dangerous from set-pieces etc. Neither Arbeloa nor Aurelio did well enough at Old Trafford to feel especially aggrieved about their non inclusion (mind you they weren't on their own to be fair) and obviously Carragher had to play somehwere.

The one slight Rafaism I suppose if you were being hyper critical is Riise for Aurelio. That said, it says much about the little Braziaian's inconsistency that he is able to not make the team as often as he doea without anybody blinking an eye. Also it'll no doubt be a bit of a war and Riise is more used to such battles.

The three things I'll be especially looking out for will be the performances of Skyrtel, Reina and Alonso. Skyrtel I thought was probably Liverpool's worst player at Old Trafford in that he was culpable in most of the important moments of the match. He'll need to do much better today, but at least he won't have the responsibility of taking the main headers. I'll be having a little look for his "standby" mode where he goes into his ball watching bit. All defenders do it from time to time but it needs to be a couple of times a season, not four or five times a match as it was against Man Utd.

It's a huge game for Alonso and I think will tell us a great deal about whether he is still a big player for us. I think he hasn't grabbed the mettle of playing alongside Masherano as well as anybody would have hoped, and now it is his responsibility to be the main holder. I hope Lucas will show him that the two defensive midfielders haven't got to hold hands and is prepared to join in the play much more and higher up than Xabi has, and I hope that Alonso rediscovers his fire fighting prowess in time for this one. A few challenges of the wishy washy nature of his attempts to block out Ronaldo from the corner last week and we would be in big trouble.

Reina I hope bounces back as he has in the past from his once a season dodgy performance. I have little doubt he will, he remains IMHO the best goalkeeper in the Premeirship.


In the "system, what went wrong?" thread, some people said there was nothing to analyse, we just weren't good enough it's as simple as that. I'm not so sure. Everton will try and do exactly the same as man Utd but without quite the willingness to throw sheer numbers of players forwards. The first step will be to pin Lucas to Alonso and in so doing isolate Gerrard and Torres. Whoever plays uptop for them will pop up in the channels all day, and If Kuyt and Babel fail to get into the game in an attacking sense as they did last week, they'll push the full backs in. They'll go to Anfield looking for the win I should think, and whatever else happens it's absolutely vital they don't get it. A draw would be a better result for us than it would be for them despite the fact we'd have passed up a chance to just about kill them off, and I take it be just that with a hard fought and frenetic 0-0.

After all that....u predict a goaless draw.....