After a somewhat dismal week for Liverpool, manager Brendan Rodgers will be hoping his side can pick themselves up and progress past Middlesbrough in tomorrow night's league cup tie. The two sides have met on numerous occasions and were last drawn against each other in this competition back in 1998!
Liverpool are still in a bit of a rut with injuries however and with a Merseyside derby to contend with at the weekend it is expected that Brendan will pick an unfamiliar line up anyway. Rickie Lambert is predicted to get his first start in a Liverpool shirt.
For Middlesbrough they are without Whitehead who is serving a suspension but ex Red Daniel Ayala is available after serving a ban himself.
The last time the two teams met was in February 2009 'Boro actually beat the Reds on that occasion 2-0 with Xabi Alonso scoring an own goal. Their last trip to Anfield was in 2008, after taking the lead via Mido an own goal from Pogatetz and a very late Steven Gerrard goal eventually gave Liverpool the win.
Middlesbrough have picked up plenty of draws in their time facing the Reds at Anfield but the last time they picked up all three points was in November 2004.
Aitor Karanka's side are currently 5th in the championship having got off to a pretty convincing start. They've only lost one game away from home so far this season and that was against Leeds.
Stat Sandwich
- The Reds have made it past the third round of the league cup in nine out of the last 12 seasons.
- Middlesbrough have won five out of their last six away league cup matches.
- Liverpool fell to a third defeat in in five Premier League games this weekend.
I asked you for your score predictions on Twitter and here are a few of the tweets I received:
@_TheLiverBird 3-0
— Julien (@King_Julien1984) September 22, 2014
@LFCKirstyLFC 3-1, Suso to play and lambert to score...would like seeing some of the fringe players have 90. Enrique, Lucas, Kolo
— Sachin Patel (@SachinPatel_87) September 22, 2014
@LFCKirstyLFC 1-1 AET. Win on pens.
— Phil (@Phil_A01) September 21, 2014
The chance to field an unfamiliar team may well produce a good result here I think. I can definitely see Lambert finding the back of the net but would also be very surprised if Middlesbrough failed to score. They'll make it hard for us but I'm predicting a 2-1 win by 90 minutes.
Enjoy the match folks, wherever you are watching!
P.s.
If you've got a second, please vote for me and the blog in the football blogging awards. I've never pretended to be the world's best blogger and realise my content compared to some blog's is not "in depth" but I put a lot of effort into running this #LFC blog alone and I've barely missed a preview or report since I started this up in September 2009 so I'd really appreciate the support :)
Just tweet this - "I am voting in @TheFBAs for @LFCKirstyLFC as best #Female blogger."