(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Oh boy! What to say that hasn’t already been said? With Liverpool and Chelsea in the Champions League again, it’s becoming an annual event.
On league standings, head-to-head, and the past weekend in the Premier League, Liverpool must be favourites. Liverpool won in fine style 5-0 against Aston Villa, who looked odds on for fourth. The win keeps Liverpool’s slender title challenge alive.
Chelsea played Tottenham, a club that the Blues tend to enjoy beating. Tottenham, with error prone Heurelho Gomes in goal, had become renowned for leaking goals. Mindful of Manchester United’s impending defeat, Chelsea would have been expected to win.
Instead, a limp 1-0 defeat by the Spurs dropped Chelsea out of title contention, to third behind Liverpool.
Two defeats by Liverpool home and away this season make a Blues’ back-to-back final appearance in the Eternal City look bleak. While the second leg at home should balance the tie back towards Chelsea, the strengths and weaknesses of both teams also favour the Reds.
Liverpool are devastatingly efficient once in the lead, and tend to go for asphyxiation rather than the killer blow. Liverpool are masters in soaking up pressure from a side desperate to regain parity. Chelsea often found this tactic frustratingly difficult to penetrate, as the 1-0 defeat at home attests.
With Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard on the pitch, the Reds’ first eleven equal the best teams in the Premier League and Europe.
Allying Torres pace and Gerrard’s passing ability, the Reds offer a frightful counter-attacking threat as teams push forward to score a leveller, but the away goals rule may make that risk one worth running at Anfield.
Pepe Reina is an agile custodian between the sticks, behind a miserly defence marshaled well by Jamie Carragher. The much-maligned Dirk Kuyt is always an alert and dangerous player who likes to creep in and score goals against a Chelsea squad too busy with Torres.
If these players remain relatively fit and present for both legs, added to Rafael Benitez’s famed mastery of European competitive tactics, Liverpool will be extremely dangerous.
One of a few possible weaknesses for Liverpool is ironically the weekend’s result. Having played themselves back into the league, their fixture schedule is more congested than Chelsea’s.
An important away fixture against Fulham before the first leg, a home tie against battling Blackburn between the ties, and a tough home game against Arsenal after the second leg lies ahead.
With Benitez’s penchant for squad rotation and blowing a fuse, will the Spaniard cope with such a calendar? A calendar he has never faced before, as usually the league is already long gone?
Aside from Benitez and Liverpool’s over reliance on a few key players, the squad itself is a weakness. Apart from Andrea Dossena, Ryan Babel, and possibly Yossi Benayoun, there is little strength in depth.
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