The Smiling Assassin

I needed that.

Was very tired yesterday evening and also had some kind of virus too, so both of those added together made me feel less than brilliant. Anyway, enough about me. Yesterday was hardly a busy newsday LFC-wise either, so things kind of worked out OK in the end.

Today is, of course, the biggest game of the season and for a start lets hear what Rafa had to say in his pre-match press conference on Friday.

YouTube – Pre match conference: Chelsea FC v Liverpool FC

If you believe some parts of the press coverage, then our bid for the league ends today, if we lose. So it’s nice to see Rafa telling everyone to calm down. I could repeat the statistic of what happened last season but I think that is becoming increasingly irrelevant, if it was even relevant in the first place.

As I mentioned on Friday, today’s game has a few nice spices in the pot and it’s nice to see Benitez and Ancelotti are adding whatever they can to the mix. And well done Rafa for not calling Ancelotti’s bluff. He’s clearly trying to deflect attention away from Chelsea’s own flaws (flaws that they aren’t going to able to solve by throwing money at the problem, like they have before, remember). Having Petr Cech suspended I think is probably going to help us more than any others, though with both sides having defenders, in Jamie Carragher & Ricardo Carvalho going through poor runs in form, the game is setup nicely, particularly when Ancelotti talks of hoping to break us down. Hoping to break down a team is hardly the words of a man bristling with confidence about his own squad, which probably explains his comments. Add in the fact that the Chairman has been at the training ground this week suggests that everyone fears a less than favourable result.

Though I really hope Benitez has more up his sleeves than simply copying wigan. I hope he does, anyway. As long as it doesn’t involve playing Aurelio and Lucas together in central midfield, we should be fine. I do agree with John Aldridge though when he says that Javier Mascherano needs to have a big game today. As does Jamie Carragher. Though if Dirk Kuyt has his way, he’d be out fishing, but that is another matter entirely. Lets hope he comes back from his game against Australia next week safe and well.

So, Ancelotti Vs. Benitez; Torres Vs. Drogba; Gerrard Vs. Lampard. All interesting aspects to the game, though I think it has more going for it than a debate on zonal marking.

Rounding things up, Benitez is looking to trade Ryan Babel for a winger from Germany and Fernando has an appetite for success, neither of which is particularly new or interesting but hey, it’s in todays papers so it’s here.

And finally, can we just run all added-on time requests through Fergie from now on. Preferably about six minutes would work as The Ure can only seem to play football properly for six minutes at a time and they seem to always be at the end of the game.

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