C'est La Vie!


It's a phrase every Liverpool fan at the moment wishes they could say without a care. After a season to forget being added to on Monday night with a damaging loss to Wigan it would be lovely to be able to sit back and say "That's life" as it were, let's just focus on the next game and move on.

Unfortunately for us, things aren't as simple as that, with a trip over to France for our Europa League tie tomorrow against Lille and then Portsmouth on the following Monday night Liverpool need focus.

The tie with Lille could go one of two ways, it could provide Liverpool with a springboard, helping them head into what could be a difficult tie with Portsmouth and thus improving morale and hopefully meaning results go their way.

On the other side of the coin though, it could be a very frustrating match for Liverpool, although a loss would not mean we were out of the competition, it would do no good at all for a team already low after a poor defeat to a side they should have beaten.

Liverpool have never faced Lille before, although they are the 10th club from France that Liverpool have met in European competition.

Lille are currently 5th in Ligue 1, 4 points behind leaders Bordeux despite having played two more games.

Lille's top goalscorer is De Melo who has 3 goals. Lille may not appear very good on paper but they are pretty good on home turf. They have not lost any of their home games in the Europa League so far so Liverpool will have to come up with something special to change the statistic.

Liverpool still have injuries to Martin Skrtel and Fabio Aurelio, although Glen Johnson and Daniel Agger should now both be travelling for tomorrow evenings fixture.

Yossi Benayoun however has been added to the injury list after he picked up an ankle injury in the loss at the DW Stadium, key player for Liverpool who we could have benefited from in this game.

In terms of the team Benitez may field I'm struggling to guess this time around, have a feeling it could be quite different, not only because it is a European fixture but also down to some lacklustre performances on Monday. With Yossi Benayoun out i think it is quite likely that Ryan Babel or Albert Riera could feature.

I also feel that Aquilani although he wasn't on the pitch for very long did make a statement, in my eyes he definitely deserves a start, maybe sit him alongside Lucas and give Masch a break? He worked his socks off at right back.

As for predicting the score, I'm not even going to bother. I simply do not know. What i do know is that it won't be a white wash and i will be very surprised should we manage to keep a clean sheet. Something like a scrappy 1-1 is what i am expecting but lets hope i am totally wrong.

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