Blackpool 'Massive' Game Build up

[SB]

We need Jean-Michel Ferri back or Stig Inge Bjornebye

Now you've got me reminiscing of the good old days

[Maxiedge]

oh the glory days...

[wiw]

Reina
Johnson
Greek
Skrtel
Carragher

Poulsen
Gerrard
Meireles

Cole
Torres
Kuyt


Apparently this is the team

Yeah they're the players, we will probably line up like this though

Johnson Skrtel Zorba Carra
Meireles Gerrard Poulsen Cole
--------Kuyt---Torres

442

[Ben_Itez]

Yeah they're the players, we will probably line up like this though

Johnson Skrtel Zorba Carra
Meireles Gerrard Poulsen Cole
--------Kuyt---Torres

442

Yep i reckon that'll be the line-up.

I think we're in serious danger of losing......i'm trying to convince myself we'll dispatch them 3 or 4 nil but the more i think about it i can only see us struggling, they'll score for sure.

[wiw]

Yep i reckon that'll be the line-up.

I think we're in serious danger of losing......i'm trying to convince myself we'll dispatch them 3 or 4 nil but the more i think about it i can only see us struggling, they'll score for sure.

Me too man. Also agree that they'll score..do you have any idea what Blackpool are like? I've never watched them I don't think

The only hope is that we will have a lot of height at the back, it's quite sensible playing Zorba for this one really. I can see us maybe tucking Carra in and almost playing 3 at the back and pushing Johnson on. Actually we probably won't

[Zapater]

I think that this quite heavily depends on how we start. If we get an early goal or two then it could be smooth sailing but the longer it takes before we score the harder it will get. I'm very concerned that they'll get an "upset" but then again as I mentioned if we score early it could demoralise them and we could get a good looking result.

Having a look at the proposed starting 11, coupled by the way we've been playing I think it's going to be hard work. Could very well be a battle.

[Ben_Itez]

Me too man. Also agree that they'll score..do you have any idea what Blackpool are like? I've never watched them I don't think

The only hope is that we will have a lot of height at the back, it's quite sensible playing Zorba for this one really. I can see us maybe tucking Carra in and almost playing 3 at the back and pushing Johnson on. Actually we probably won't

I dont know them well but from what i've seen they like to play pass and move football and will have a real go at teams rather than sitting back and hoping for a point....im trying to decide if this is good for us or not

This will be their 5th away game of the season of which they've won two already scoring a fair few goals. They'll definitely give us a few hairy moments but it'll depend who gets the first goal. If they do it doesnt bare thinking about

[Mostar]

We just need a win, any kind of win before we are totally and utterly out of contention for any kind of top 4 challenge.

I will gladly take a horrible boring 1 nil win this time.

Definitely. It won't be a stellar performance (God knows we deserve one after so many miserable ones) but as long as we grind out the win I'll be happy.

[dww]

It is the great Anfield mismatch but who are the underdogs?

Liverpool versus Blackpool might seem like a one-sided clash but Roy Hodgson's team are the ones under pressure

Paul Wilson
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 2 October 2010 23.00 BST


Roy Hodgson Time could be up for Roy Hodgson, who is feeling the pressure, if Liverpool lose to Blackpool at Anfield. Photograph: Jamie Mcdonald/Getty Images

Liverpool versus Blackpool tomorrow is a great, perhaps even an archetypal, Premier League fixture. A world famous club with five European Cups and 18 titles against a town chiefly famous for a tower, a tangerine strip and a 57-year-old Cup final. There are mismatches in most leagues and plenty of teams more celebrated for their quirkiness than their achievements but surely the Premier League has the outright monopoly on arranging matters so that the plucky underdogs, the alleged jokers, the side whose summer transfer dealings were compromised by the chairman's refusal to pay anyone more than £10,000 per week, travel to Anfield one place in the table above their illustrious opponents.

Maybe it should not really count as a mismatch. Liverpool's midweek trip to Utrecht was billed as a mismatch by some but did not turn out that way, and Blackpool's Merseyside-born midfielder Gary Taylor-Fletcher, in the forthright manner that comes naturally to those brought up by the Irish Sea, has talked up his own team's chances. "Liverpool are not having the best of spells," he said, referring almost lightly to their worst start to a league campaign for half a century. "We're going there thinking it's a good time to be playing Liverpool."

It is still only early October, yet surely no one would have predicted at the start of the season that Liverpool would start this game below their opponents. Blackpool's initial resilience might have been guessed at, given the splendid examples set by other supposed no-hopers such as Hull and Wigan in recent seasons: it is the threadbare nature of Liverpool's performances that has come as a shock. Scouse traditionalists may insert a joke at this point, to the effect that as long as Everton are even lower in the table Liverpool will never feel the situation is intolerable, but no one is laughing at that one now. Everton are a strong side with a mighty team spirit and will delight their fans more often than they will displease them this season. No one is calling for David Moyes to be sacked. Everton will be all right.

These are not the sort of things being said about Liverpool. What is being said, often by their own supporters, is that Liverpool have yet to put together a convincing display over 90 minutes in any of their 13 games to date, against opponents as diverse as Manchester United, Utrecht and Northampton Town. Roy Hodgson may be a sound bloke and a thoroughly competent manager but he is under pressure as never before in his distinguished career. Unlike Moyes, he does not have credit in the bank from previous seasons. While it was said at the time of Hodgson's appointment that it was merely a stalling gesture, a pragmatic way to keep the club running until the ownership issues are resolved, few envisaged Liverpool themselves doing the stalling.

Hodgson probably appreciates the difference between managing Fulham and managing Liverpool, despite what his detractors say, and it is hardly his fault that the Fernando Torres he inherited has turned out so far to be a pale shadow of the star that burned so brightly for Rafa Benítez. Yet little of that matters next to tomorrow's result. A win would bring a small amount of respite, without amounting to a corner turned. A draw would not go down well anywhere except on the Fylde coast. A defeat could have seismic repercussions.

This is not simply because Hodgson would do well to survive such an unthinkable outcome, so soon after the Carling Cup humiliation, but because Liverpool can hardly countenance such an unthinkable outcome. No one is suggesting relegation would loom were Liverpool to lose, or that Torres will take himself off in a huff when the next transfer window opens, but once it begins to be said that a club are in decline the next thing to look for is the watershed moment when the process becomes both recognisable and irreversible. Losing at home to Blackpool has a certain ring about it in that respect.

Blackpool have a conspicuous team spirit and a charismatic manager and at the moment Liverpool cannot say the same. Blackpool are under no particular pressure when they step out at Anfield. Liverpool definitely cannot say the same. As Premier League mismatches go, this could be one to remember.

[BobTheCharmer]

should be a good game today. looking forward to it. just need to start like we did against sunderland and hopefully get an early goal or two. clean sheet and a two or three niler would be just what is required.

[DannyMan2006]

should be a good game today. looking forward to it. just need to start like we did against sunderland and hopefully get an early goal or two. clean sheet and a two or three niler would be just what is required.

I think we'll get a big win and the term "papering over the cracks" will come to mind.........

[BobTheCharmer]

I think we'll get a big win and the term "papering over the cracks" will come to mind.........

it'll be 3 points and little more apart from much needed confidence. its literally game by game and see where we end up. If we're saying 7th is the minimum, we're more than capable of acheiving that. I think 5th.

I know you hate (dislike/not rate) Roy and his tactics and while I agree he must shoulder a proportion of the blame, the players much like last year are the real people letting the club down. take Kuyt on Thursday as an example, he was a shambles of a player.

Anyway there's no need to get into a discussion on the merits of Roy. I'm looking forward to the game, thats all.

[Fredo]

Hodgson's got to go now, he's a dead man walking. Win or lose, his position at the club is untenable now.

[Gibbo]

Please tell me Agger is injured.

[BobTheCharmer]

Hodgson's got to go now, he's a dead man walking. Win or lose, his position at the club is untenable now.

of course he is. a win means nothing, two wins means nothing, hell 6 on the trot would mean nothing.

I don't care anymore tbh, I'm steering clear of this place for the forseeable. Its more depressing than working the smaritans helpline. If I was answering calls today I'd tell them all to jump or swallow the whole ****ing bottle of pills.

Have fun all, when you've run roy out of town and got rafa back, the seas will part and world peace will prevail.