Saturday 21 February 2009

Team for Liverpool

With Wright-Phillips serving the second game of his ban tomorrow, and Nigel de Jong eligible again one change is obvious.

Should this be done the side could be set up very defensively - with three holding midfielders and then Ireland drifting behind the front two.


This doesn't provide much natural width though. If they really wanted to go for it they could bring in Caicedo for Onuoha (moving Kompany back into defence), with Robinho and Zabaleta as makeshift wingers.


This could leave us a bit open in midfield. But given the injury to Steven Gerrard and suspension of Xabi Alonso we won't be coming up against a very strong Liverpool team. Lucas and Benayoun will probably play, against whom an Ireland/de Jong combination could well succeed.

3 comments:

clevblue said...

Mascherano will be a problem for midfield, De Jong will have his work cut out without Vincent

Can't see Hughes suddenly going 442, but would like to see it

Gary said...

I expect a 4-1-4-1. Zabaleta was known to play down the right at Espanyol, so don't see why Hughes won't play him there. On top of that I am not sure we should be looking to try and play with width, we could leave ourselves really exposed if we try to stretch liverpool, Gerrard is missing and i think we should take advantage of that and go straight down the middle, really using Bellamys runs to do so.

Given
Richards Dunne Onuoha Bridge

Kompany

Zabaleta Ireland De Jong Robinho

Bellamy

kuldeep said...

keep the backline of richards,dunne,kompany,bridge.

Hv de jong as the covering midfielder
and play elano,ireland,robinho
with caicedo and bellamy upfront.

enuff defensive cover..and a n attack that will worry liverpool ..