CAPITAL CALLING
Liverpool ready for first leg of their Manchester double act
FOUR months into life on Merseyside and Jurgen Klopp is learning fast. Asked yesterday about his tactics for tomorrow’s Capital One Cup final, the Liverpool manager said: ‘Why would I talk about that here? Even in Manchester they have TV, right?’
An amusing moment at Melwood, it was entirely appropriate too. For when Klopp and his Liverpool team look into the immediate future, all they see is Manchester — blue and red.
Tomorrow at Wembley it is Manuel Pellegrini’s City, slain so majestically by Liverpool on their own pitch back in November. Then, in mid-March, it is Louis van Gaal’s United in the Europa League. There is no trophy available for the second tie — not at this stage anyway — but as news broke of the draw at lunchtime yesterday, it seemed just as important.
‘The players were scattered everywhere,’ said goalkeeper Simon Mignolet. ‘The gym, the treatment room, the canteen. They all got the message soon enough, though.’
Manchester has never been far from anybody’s thoughts during Liverpool’s barren years. It has ‘so much to answer for’, as The Smiths once lamented.
Over the next three weeks, however, the focus will be even sharper. Tomorrow could give Klopp the trophy that eluded his predecessor Brendan Rodgers while the chance to dispatch United from Europe holds quite obvious attractions.
Klopp hides away from the significance of neither.
Just as the 1-0 defeat to United at Anfield in January on a day his team was superior clearly still irks him, so he has no problem admitting that the 4-1 dismantling of City at the Etihad Stadium in the Barclays Premier League will drive his players forwards tomorrow.
‘That was a really good game and we use it a lot, more than others, for analysis in terms of how we want to play,’ he revealed.
‘We do use it to show what is possible. We will keep it in our minds until we get a better one. We will get chances in this final that is for sure. I am not sure how we will avoid City getting chances too but I know we will get some.
‘I certainly think we have a good opportunity to make them more problems than they would imagine at the moment.’
Last November, Liverpool terrorised City, the two Brazilians Philippe Coutinho (below) and Firmino finding pockets of space between defenders that not everybody even knew existed.
Klopp’s problem, though, has been consistency and Liverpool’s journey through this competition illustrates that as well as anything. Two League Cup ties — against Carlisle and Stoke City — required penalty shootouts after dismal nights at Anfield while the other home tie was a sketchy 1- 0 win over Bournemouth.
It will be this capriciousness that Pellegrini’s City will hope to exploit. The Chilean’s team are no great bastions of consistency themselves but they are at least used to winning matches at Wembley in recent years — two semi-finals and two finals — while Liverpool’s last visit saw them crash dreadfully against Aston Villa in last season’s FA Cup.
City produced one of their best displays of recent weeks in winning in Kiev on Wednesday and will fly south late this afternoon with some confidence that the improving form of Vincent Kompany and Sergio Aguero, coupled with the depth presented by the return of Wilfried Bony and Jesus Navas, will edge them towards the performance they need. Pellegrini’s decision to persist with his Capital One Cup goalkeeper Willy Caballero is certainly strange but that apart he will feel that his decision to rest players in the FA Cup last weekend may be vindicated.
‘I think it’s a very important week,’ said Pellegrini. ‘I always want to win all the trophies in which I participate, because it’s my mentality and it must be the mentality of a big club. ‘But it is very important for us always to try to win the first trophy of the season.
‘Unfortunately for us we could not continue in the FA Cup, but we are still in the other three competitions and I hope we will be successful.’
If Pellegrini does entertain gloriously romantic visions of sporting success then he must do so inside his own head only. Yesterday’s muted press conference did little to betray just how significant tomorrow’s game is to a manager who desperately wants to leave this summer with at least one more trophy.
During his two and a half years at City, Pellegrini has revealed precious little of his true self and that has been a shame. There will be no footprints left in the sand. His drive does match that of Klopp, the German merely expresses his better.
‘I have some nice pictures in my head about what Wembley could be like after the game,’ said Klopp. ‘It could be very cool.’