A venue that has brought mixed results over the years but definitely a highly important fixture to Liverpool this time around. Last time out three points were picked up at home against QPR with the visitors having Radek Cerny to thank that there wasn’t a more realistic scoreline. All the talk prior to this game in the media is how and why are Liverpool better on the road this season than at their own ground where the best sides in Europe have faltered in the past. The bottom line...............they are not! There is no difference in the Liverpool who beat Arsenal on the road to the one who failed to beat Sunderland at home. The lazy journalists are focussing on a slight imbalance to the amount of wins away from Anfield, compared to the wins attained at their once impenetrable fortress where the fans can make the most accomplished of opponents doubt themselves.
It’s easy to look at a form guide, see an imbalance and then pick at that fact declaring what is obvious even to the untrained eye. But, to anyone willing to watch Liverpool’s games this season, it is plain to see there is no difference in Liverpool’s away form to home form. Fulham for example, a game where Liverpool should have been out of sight before a Reina fumble cost them dearly. QPR were narrowly defeated at Anfield but for the final 20 minutes Liverpool looked nervous at the back and could have quite easily been made to pay for again failing to take their chances. Norwich City, Manchester United and Sunderland did take advantage of being in the same scenarios at Anfield. Now whilst the journalists will claim they are also comparing the current tally of points achieved away from home to last season this again is a poor defence for this mindset. Roy Hodgson was in charge for half of that season, a man who in all his years of management, has probably only felt confident about an away game for his team when in his tenure at Inter, when the fixture list throws up A.C.Milan away! What I am saying is Roy’s teams enjoy a large percentage of away excursions ending in fruitless visits to their counterparts grounds.
Ignoring the rather boring rumblings of Fleet Street, usually the same media sources STILL linking us to 30 something players in the impending January transfer window despite FSG stipulating from the outset that Liverpool will no longer buy older players, tomorrow is a defining moment for every player in a Liverpool shirt. If we really want Champions League football as a reward for this season’s work, a win is a must. At the end of the game we don’t want to hear about, if we took our chances, or if the officials didn’t make mistakes, you control your own destiny and those 11 players need to do all they physically can to ensure we win. Every team in the Premier League is going to get poor decisions go against them as that is just the nature of the poor standard of referees in this league. It’s also true to say that most teams in this league create chances, but the difference between the ones at the top challenging for silverware/ Champions League qualification and the ones who are not, is simple.....................converting those chances! No trophies are given out at the end of the season for ‘most efforts rebounding off the woodwork’ or ‘most chances created in a season’ this game is all about turning possession and attacking creativity into points. Always has been, always will be.
The time for defending summer signings to friends by highlighting ‘he needs time to settle’ has been and gone, every player at that club has had sufficient time to stamp their mark on the team. Some would say tomorrow offers the biggest motivation for Stewart Downing a player who has promised a lot but not lived up to his £20m price tag since his summer arrival. But let us not pick out individuals as there are probably a lot of players who that sentence could apply to, they know who they are. Aston Villa should not realistically pose much of a threat to a far stronger Liverpool side but as we have seen throughout this season, this counts for nothing. What we do know is that even despite Wigan’s late heroics of Saturday evening, we are 5 points behind a poor Chelsea team who occupy 3rd place. We need to put a string of victories together if we harbour any hope of Champions League qualification. Even ex-Liverpool players are dismissing our hopes of qualification in their roles as TV pundits, whatever has the world come to. This reiterates the enormity of the task ahead. It is time for players to do what they are paid to do and start winning games for their employers, after all that is why they were employed in the first place. We are not in the excuse making business at Anfield, never have been, so let’s let our performances do the talking starting with a comfortable win at Villa Park tomorrow.