Saturday, January 03, 2009

Important For Liverpool To Keep Up The Winning Habit

Liverpool enter 2009 in our most promising league position in the Premier League era.

As such, the arrival of the FA Cup feels something of a distraction from the real business of winning the league.

However, such thoughts should be banished come kick off. It’s important to maintain the winning habit, we have not played at the new Wembley yet and Deepdale is not just any ground. It’s at Deepdale that Bill Shankly spent much of his playing career and North End have named a stand in his honour.

His favourite player, Sir Tom Finney, should be attending the game too. As such, it would be heresy for Liverpool to not embrace the competition and the tie.

In Neil Mellor Preston also possess one of our more colourful ex-players who will be fondly remembered for his performance and goal against Olympiakos on the way to the glory of Istanbul. I’d expect Benitez to rest a few players but would hope he maintains a strong spine perhaps augmented by a couple of the younger players such as Darby and Spearing.

Of course it would also be great to see Fernando Torres playing a part. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of our season is that it has been achieved largely without the world’s best centre-forward. A week ago I would not have expected to see our number eight playing but perhaps a starting place will help provide a useful focus away from other events. It would be good to see both Lucas and Insua continue their impressive run of form. Insua strikes me as the best left-back we have at the club and he deserves a run in the team.

It should a cracking match. Hard fought, fast, frenetic and very entertaining. Bill Shankly would be salivating in anticipation.

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