While all the pre-match musings are focused around an abomination of a performance against Bolton on Saturday, the importance of Wednesday night’s league cup semi-final for Liverpool FC must not be downplayed.
In the immediate aftermath of their 3-1 defeat at the Reebok, attention was immediately drawn to the attitude and commitment of the team by manager Kenny Dalglish. Their performance at the weekend suggested the players had completely underestimated the Premiership strugglers, demonstrating an attitude Dalglish says is directly opposed to everything the club stands for.
Aside from worsening performances on the pitch and now bearing in mind the Luis Suarez situation, Liverpool’s entire philosophy is open to scrutiny. It used to be that they stood for playing a successful and attractive brand of football. When you consider they have no European football this season and were unceremoniously dropped by Adidas recently, that tradition is now called into question.
All the above considered, the game tonight becomes the most important game of Liverpool’s season, bar none.
The club needs to be successful on the pitch and getting to a cup final would show that, despite recent results, they are moving in the right direction. The road to achieving that aim starts tonight, but Liverpool cannot afford to waste this opportunity. Manchester City , however, have nothing to lose, thus making Liverpool’s task even more problematic.
City know they have to score tonight and as a result will attack goal-shy Liverpool from the start. The league leaders were, until recently, averaging 3 goals a game this season so scoring is hardly a daunting prospect for them. Meanwhile, despite having a 1-0 lead going into tonight’s game and knowing that they only have to avoid defeat to book a trip to Wembley, Liverpool know that they too will need to score at least once to get through the tie.
Dalglish needs to mastermind his finest hour of this Liverpool tenure. Attacking City from the start leaves his side open to being hit on the counter-attack. If they were to sit-back, however, and attempt to shut Mancini’s men out for 90 minutes they may well be left with egg on their face.
The best path to facing Cardiff at Wembley may well be to play on the counter themselves and I fully expect Liverpool to do so. They have proven capable of mastering this style of play away against the big clubs already with victories at Stamford Bridge, The Emirates and most importantly The Etihad against City. However, when the onus has been on them to go out and beat one of their main rivals at home this season they have come up short.
As previously mentioned, failure is not an option tonight for The Reds.
While Europa League qualification or a League Cup victory was not originally the main aim this season, reaching a Wembley final would begin to appease a group of fans growing increasingly frustrated with the current sides’ failure to reach the promised land of the Champions League.
Avoiding defeat tonight will give the current side a great opportunity against Championship Cardiff to start to live up to the main expectation the club and Dalglish himself stands for; Winning trophies.
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