Liverpool FC v Swansea City AFC – Match Preview
Liverpool welcome Swansea City to Anfield tomorrow afternoon for one of the Premierships late kick offs. Jürgen Klopp and his team will be looking to add another home win to their performance during the week against FC Girondins de Bordeaux and in so doing, improve their patchy home form. With any luck this performance will be more commanding than Thursday’s and Simon Mignolet will have learned the difference between six and 22 seconds. The less said about the his making the most schoolboy of errors, the better and I’m sure he, like the rest of us will want to move on quickly. To close the chapter, here’s an anagram of his name: Long Time Mi Son. Interesting, and say no more.
Daniel Sturridge somewhat miraculously cried off ahead of the Europa League fixture against Bordeaux and so remains a doubt for tomorrow. One has to wonder if Daniel Sturridge is either the most unfortunately, clumsily, fragile professional footballer in the history of the game or if indeed there is more to this whole situation than meets the eye. Or even the public for that matter. Whatever it is, I’m becoming more of the opinion that this is more a psychological issue than a physical one.
Klopp said during his pre-match press conference yesterday “… Your body has to learn to adapt to new intensities of training and in this time you have to learn what is serious pain and what is only pain.” I interpreted this as a reference to the England international having to understand and accept the increased intensity and stress of higher levels of training that follow a time out injured, are to be expected as part of the healing process and not simply to cry of being injured… Again.
Away from Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho remains a doubt with a slight hamstring injury and it’s unlikely he’ll be risked. Same goes for Jordans Henderson and Rossiter. The latter of whom will likely play for the U21’s on Monday away to Manchester United. A rather tasty comeback game but I’m sure the 18 year-old wouldn’t have it any other way. For Henderson, I got the impression Klopp will wait until the last minute.
In terms of availability, expect the back four from Thursday to remain with the exception of Kolo Touré making way for Martin Skrtel to join Alberto Moreno, Dejan Lovren and Nathaniel Clyne in front of Mignolet. Lucas Leiva is serving a one game suspension after his fifth yellow card against Manchester City last week and this may pave the way for Joe Allen to make the starting line up against his old side alongside Emre Can and James Milner in midfield.
Whilst Allen is by no means, a threat to Lucas’ place in the team, his performance against Bordeaux was actually pretty decent, to be fair. He made some useful runs and took up some good attacking positions. I doubt there’s a long term future for him at Liverpool but the Welshman is adapting to the new regime. Can he do enough to save himself from being sold at the next opportunity? I doubt it but, for the moment, he’s an option and in my opinion, a more than capable one.
With Coutinho unavailable, there should be a start for Jordan Ibe to the right of Firmino and a recall for Adam Lallana to the Brazilian’s left. Klopp wasn’t 100% sure about Christian Benteke’s availability as he rightly believe’s the 24 year-old isn’t back to full fitness. In view of this, I think the boss may well start the game with the Belgian on the bench and replicate last week’s effective use of Firmino as the false nine with Milner playing in a more advanced role.
Either way, and whichever team Klopp sends out, this is a game we would expect the team to be winning. In my view, Swansea’s two best players in recent times have been Wilfried Bonny and Jonjo Shelvey. The latter of whom is suspended and the former has been sold. I don’t believe the game will be easy, but Garry Monk’s team is four places below Liverpool for a reason. This should, if Liverpool play to their ability and without nerves, be apparent come 6pm tomorrow evening.
In order to have any chance of challenging this season, Liverpool are in massive need of stringing a sequence of good results together at Anfield. Obvious stuff. The best place to start is tomorrow at Anfield. One could argue there’s absolutely no point in beating Man City in their own back yard one week, if you’re going to get done by a team who are struggling even more than you are the next. The expression charity begins at home should not extend to any of the other 19 teams in the Barclays Premier League.
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