Rafa: José is my bitch

this.is.anfield match preview by Benny C

Well, here we are.

The day of another big night at Anfield....

I must admit I am more than a little nervous. (If by nervous I mean feeling quite sick now, then that is it)

Chelsea are not going to be easy. Not in the slightest, but we have shown that we are more than capable of giving them a run for their money. On the plus side we were the last team to beat them. (Hopefully the start of a bogey team thing? One can only hope....) That has to be at the forefront of their minds as it is on ours. A shock could well be on the cards.

I will just leave with a list of teams we were not supposed to beat in the European cup:

St. Etienne
Juventus
Real Madrid
AC Milan
oh and Chelsea........
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Rafael Benitez looked ahead to tonight's Champions League showdown with Chelsea at Anfield and declared: "They know we can beat them."

Chelsea may have won all eight of their matches in the Premiership and Champions League this season, but the Liverpool manager believes the Londoners will step out at Anfield tonight still remembering their defeat in the semi-final last season.

And that fact, he believes, will give his players a huge psychological boost before the game kicks off. CONTINUE...



The most extreme reaction was from John Arne Riise, who, in a moment of utter abandon, threw himself into the Kop, and seconds later, threw his kit, John Aldridge-style, to the delirious fans. Thankfully Riise kept his modesty tucked within his grey jockstrap.

"I didn't know what I was doing, I just kept giving the fans everything I had on," he later said. "I had said to the players before the game that if we won I'd strip off and give all my clothes to the fans. It was the greatest night ever. I was crying one minute and laughing the next - and I wasn't the only one."

Paul Tomkins on Last Season's Glorious Win agsint Chelsea







Jose: The world is against us
Jose: Liverpool did not score against us in THAT semi-final
Guardian: Chelsea line-up stronger for European rematch

Benítez plotting to expose Chelsea as mere mortals

BEFORE every match, Rafael Benítez takes out a chalkboard and points out to his players the chinks to be targeted in the opposition’s armour. Sometimes, he admits, this is not easy, but, as he prepares to plot the downfall of a Chelsea team who have reasserted their aura of invincibility by winning every game bar one they have played since losing at Anfield in the Champions League semi-final, second leg in May, the Liverpool manager maintains that their Achilles’ heel — whatever it might be — is there to be exposed.

José Mourinho might dispute the validity of Luis García’s winning goal that evening, saying last night that he will continue to do so until his “dying day”, but, whatever he may call it — “the phantom goal”, “the goal that never was” — few neutrals would deny that Liverpool were worthy winners over the two legs.

Other factors contributed to the result, not least late-season fatigue in the Chelsea camp and the astonishing fervour of the Anfield crowd, but Benítez feels that his team’s triumph was founded on a thorough tactical game plan that he will seek to replicate this evening.

“We know that it will be a difficult game, but we can beat them,” Benítez said in a press conference at Anfield yesterday afternoon. “We did it last season and we know how to do it again. They have the same strong points as last time and maybe the same weak points as well. I am sure that they have weak points and we will try to find those weak points.” What they are, Benítez would not say, but with his squad seemingly lacking the width needed to stretch a Chelsea defence that has conceded only one goal in seven Barclays Premiership matches this season, it seems likely that he will look to Peter Crouch, his towering centre forward, to unsettle John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho.

The pace of Djibril Cissé is another intriguing option for Benítez, given the problems that Milan Baros, who has since left for Aston Villa, caused in last season’s semifinal, although it is far from certain that the France forward will be recalled to the starting line-up.

If anything, Benítez is more likely to err on the side of caution, to judge from his suggestion yesterday that the stakes are far lower in a group game than they were in last season’s semi-final. Sami Hyypia struck on something when he said that victory over Chelsea might be more crucial when the teams return to Anfield for a Premiership fixture on Sunday.

“For me, maybe Sunday’s game will be more important to win than this,” the defender said. “Also, for the Premiership in general, it would be good if we can beat them on Sunday.”

Beating Chelsea remains easier said than done, but Hyypia hit the mark again when he said that talking up the opposition was selfdefeating. “Chelsea are not from another planet,” he said. “They’re a very good team with a very good manager, they have a lot of quality up front, they don’t concede a lot of goals and it’s not easy to beat them. But no one expected us to beat them last May. They’re just a team with 11 players and we have beaten them before.”

Encouraging words, carrying a much-needed reminder that it is Liverpool and not Chelsea who are the champions of Europe. Mourinho and Roman Abramovich do not always get what they want, a fact that will be borne out when Steven Gerrard leads out his home-town team this evening, having come so close to succumbing to the London club’s overtures during the summer.

Hyypia admitted yesterday that he had feared Gerrard was on his way out of Anfield, but contrary to some of the eulogies penned at the time, it took more than Gerrard to inspire Liverpool to the European Cup and tonight it will require superhuman endeavours from 11 players, 40,000 passionate Scousers and a portly Spaniard with a chalkboard if Chelsea are to be exposed as mere mortals once more.

HOW THEY LINE UP

LIVERPOOL (possible; 4-4-1-1): J M Reina — S Finnan, J Carragher, S Hyypia, D Traoré — L García, D Hamann, X Alonso, J A Riise — S Gerrard — P Crouch.

CHELSEA (possible; 4-3-3): P Cech — P Ferreira, J Terry, R Carvalho, W Gallas — M Essien, C Makelele, F Lampard — A Robben, H Crespo, D Duff.

Referee: M De Santis (Italy).

TELEVISION: Live on Sky Sports 2 from 6pm (kick-off 7.45pm).