Benfica vs Liverpool, (CL QF Away 1st Leg) @ Estádio da Luz (The Original One), 20h00 GMT, Tues 05 Apr 2022

Before Brexit, if you’d said ‘ounce’ on a football forum the EU would have thrown you in jail!

And my straight bananas! FREEDOM :rofl:

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Coincidentally, I work in financial regulation and once found the EU bendy banana regulation by accident when looking for something else. I was surprised to see it does actually exist though after a quick review (couldn’t help myself) I have to say it didn’t seem unreasonable. Hardly worth all the hoo-ha in my humble opinion :smirk:

The mountain on which I’d die :wink:

I agree with the idea of rotation in this game to allow our strongest 11 the best chance against City. Fortunately we have the squad for it. I’d like to see Matip rested I think. Konate is capable. And some minutes for TAA if he is fit enough. Maybe start Gomez then sub Trent in 2nd half.

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I think you can bring in Konate and Diaz for certain. I’d also say Mane and Salah and Fabinho based on their limited minutes on Saturday. Hendo and Thiago played a full 90 so might need to be managed (the latter in particular),

Alisson
Trent Konate Van Dijk Robbo
Fabinho
Chamberlain Jones
Salah Mane Diaz

Maybe that? Maybe a bit stronger, but with Klopp using four subs by the 70 minute mark? It would be nice to put this to bed before the return leg.

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Yeah, 2006 still hurts me.

During lockdown I re-watched that game in Portugal (as I did a lot of other, to refresh my memory about some games), f*ck, we were so bad that night. Rafa had some weird selection for that game with Morientes and Fowler up top. Plus, more bad luck with Sissoko’s incident.

But for the return at Anfield I was so pumped up. We were defending champions and obviously you felt we had enough to turn the result around against Benfica.

I remember that special new Liverbird flag on the Kop. The pitch was one of the worst I’ve seen at Anfield. We lost both Hyypia and Riise before the game, so Traore and Warnock had to start. Paul Anderson was on the bench. And two wonder goals from Simao and Miccoli.

It was not a good way to go out as defending champions after Istanbul.

I know we had the little revenge in 09/10, but this time let’s make it in the CL also.

:slight_smile:

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Benfica is a bus parking team with the ability to come from behind too. At home they were 0-1 and 1-2 behind against my ‘friends’ from Amsterdam and away the scored a goal out of nowhere 10 minutes before time.

Please beat them otherwise i have to hear the Ajax-shite for a long time.

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I suppose because of the draw most bookies now have us and City as joint favourites. One game at a time and all that , but I honestly can’t see us not progressing over two legs and with the return at Anfield.

tbh , I might be just as interested to see how the Mancs get on against Pep’s bogey team on Tuesday. As long as City don’t get to run up a cricket score in the first leg , then anything is possible having to play the masters of shithousery back at their place.

And If City do have a bad result Tuesday , they are already going to be psychologically damaged before they face us at the weekend.

Fuck , what a week this is going to be.

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We lost against Inter at home. Take no chances and kill the tie in the first leg

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Yea can’t see Klopp messing around with this one, I expect all the big guns to play. Well not all, just 11 of them.

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I’d actually like to see us win this comfortably as a confidence booster and if Mo could score it would be a bonus as he has been a bit off full-steam since AFCON.

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We only ‘lost’ because we didn’t need to do any more to go through.

If we needed a result at Anfield against Inter we’d have got one, I’m almost 100% sure of that. We had another couple of gears to go into if necessary.

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The first match was enough of an indicator not to go in the second leg with “a few gears to go”. If that was the plan (and I don’t think it was), it was a pretty dangerous one. But yeah, it’s unnecessary to compare Inter and Benfica. We’ll see how the first match goes, maybe we can create a serious enough advantage, maybe not.

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Was it? I don’t think so. Inter were done after 55 minutes.

The game at Anfield was the only game in our last 17 that we haven’t won, and losing made no difference to our progress in the competition. That isn’t a coincidence. We could have stepped it up if we needed to.

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or any game.

Just need to keep it tight and nick 1 or 2 goals making the 2nd leg a formality.

I didn’t agree with a lot of the reactions after the first game (like that Inter outplayed us, there was maybe that feeling because a lot of people expected us to walk over them), but yeah I felt like it was still tricky. Perhaps we weren’t quite 100% like we would be in a more “normal” game when we have to win, but I don’t think we planned to go into that game with a few gears left in reserve. Who knows what happens if Vidal doesn’t get sent off straight after their goal. No disaster, we deserved to go through, but overall yeah it was tight (and perhaps tighter than we all expected).

Feels like you’re saying a lot there without actually saying anything.

We weren’t at full throttle against Inter yet we were the better side in both legs. I think it’s pretty clear we could have upped the tempo at Anfield if we needed to, after Sanchez (not Vidal) was sent off it became apparent it wasn’t necessary.

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Hopefully a comfortable and no injuries 2-0 / 3-0 win. Then De Bruyne and Cancelo to pickup a minor 1-2 week injury from Atletico’s anti futbol style

Just trying to explain myself without portraying like it’s black and white. I don’t think it was our choice to go through in that fashion and in terms of result. We don’t know if the Vidal red card happens or not. We were a bit worse than we usually are, they were a bit better than people who don’t watch them often enough expected. That’s all.