In an ideal world Blues should pick up a point this weekend, and beat Everton at home next week. If we can pick up four points anyway round that will be great, and at least we can brew a bit more confidence.
Anyway…ahead to Saturday’s tough encounter at Anfield. Liverpool are playing some great football this season under new manager Rafael Benitez - as they proved midweek in Europe with a 1-0 victory over Deportivo, whereas Blues are playing great football too, but simply not scoring.
In six games Blues have managed to draw five and lose one…scoring a pathetic four goals, and more pleasingly keeping two clean sheets, again thanks to our defence.
Muzzy will be travelling with the rest of his teammates, after some successful training sessions, although Dunn is out again. Stan appears to have got over his recent injury and therefore I expect him to start at left back this weekend, with Julian in front of him – maybe this will be rotated to try and confuse Liverpool. So on the injury side things are improving, but we’re still without a Mikael Forssell who can get hold of the ball and stick it in the back of the net – yes, as easily as that, 1, 2, 3 and it's in.
As for Liverpool…they could be without the services of in form Milan Baros after picking up a minor hamstring injury. We all know Cisse won’t play after his awful leg injury – lets just hope he recovers and returns to football his usual self.
Last season saw Blues lose 3-1 at Anfield, so lets hope this can be improved at least.
Liverpool are organised as a unit, and are especially strong in defence. They like to play attractive football, and like all top teams counter attack quickly; so lets be aware boys.
We do need to pick up points fast, before we slip any further to the foot of the table – the lads know this more than anyone, and I’m sure they will want to do all they can to change this as quickly as possible.
Everyone thinks we have no chance this weekend, I remain optimistic as usual - but stepping out of the biased view, I do seriously feel we can pick something up from this game – as long as we don’t keep ‘hitting and hoping’ as I’ve noticed lately. Since we have splashed out on Heskey we keep ploughing long, hopeless balls to him and just hoping he can do something with it, this is something Coca Cola league two do – no disrespect. Pass on the thing on the turf and make space for one another, then believe me chances will come.
As I said earlier in the article, ‘maybe not this weekend’ and I feel Liverpool will have a lot of confidence after a midweek victory – and being at home will go against us, so therefore I feel they will have the edge. Blues will click; I’m sure of that, but just not this weekend I feel.
So therefore it hurts me deeply to predict my second loss - a narrow (and a controversial jammy) home win.
Contact Leigh direct: bcfcleigh@aol.com