Roy Hodgson is considering fielding senior stars such as Fernando Torres against Utrecht on Thursday night. The manager is delighted with how his Spanish striker has progressed over recent games - and believes El Nino is forming a potent understanding with Raul Meireles and Dirk Kuyt. Now he is pondering playing the trio in our second Europa League encounter later this week. "It's on my mind to play Torres, Raul Meireles and Dirk Kuyt on Thursday," he said. "I think they're knitting together well. "I thought Torres was much, much different (against Sunderland) to the one in the first couple of games. http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/latest-news/roy-trio-could-star-v-utrecht
This cant come bloody quick enough They looked a decent outfit when they destroyed Celtic. I think they lost 1-0 to AZ Alkmaar at the weekend.
In the Eredivisie they have a 100% home record this season. I am glad to hear that Roy Hodgson is is thinking of playing a stronger squad than in the previous Europa game. A win at this stage of the competition would put Liverpool in a very strong position in their group.
we need to get torres scoring again 1 or 2 goals on thursday followed by a couple againt blackpool would do nicely going into a derby with bottom of the table everton
There's nothing to consider as far as im concerned. We cant buy a win to save our lives at the minute so imo he needs to play the strongest possible starting eleven & win a fcuking game! Hopefully then if a good performance goes with a good result it will kick is on with Blackpool after that & so on.
I never understand resting players this early in a season, I mean torres is in the peak of his career 27 isnt he? Surely two games a week is not asking too much. Why not just give him an extra day off training. Fair enough in Jan/Feb after a tough x-mass period of league games but its 5 games in
Big enough crew from here going. No particular meet up planned but it'll prob be in a Square or Irish Pub in Utrecht.
I absolutely hate this squad rotation system, the more a team play together the stronger they get. Look at the great teams we had in the 70's/80's and theres your proof. Replace a player if he's playing bad or injured but dont change the whole team around. These are highly paid professional sportsmen who should be able to last a whole season of games, weather its league, cup, or european. I expect this is going to be a hard game and im half expecting us to lose. Depends on the team we put out.
I know what your saying but the game is a lot faster and physically demanding now than it was then. I still think the players are overprotected but there is no way their bodies would be able to cope with all that travelling, training and 60 games a season imo. Rotation is part of the modern game now. Remember how Rafa who supposedly introduced this system to English football used to get bet with this stick. Hope to see a relatively strong team on Thursday though saying this.
Time to play our strongest team week in week out and try and get some consistency and rythm to our play. Make no mistake this is going to be an extremely difficult match. Id go with the following:- .................Reina..................... Kelly.....Carra.......Skertel....Agger Johnson..Meireles...Gerrard....Cole ....................Kuyt................... ...................Torres................. We need to be more solid in the full back areas and prevent crossed coming into the box so Id go with Kelly and Agger. Realistic team as follows: .................Reina..................... Kelly...Carra.......Soto.........Agger Maxi..Meireles.....Lucas........Jova ....................Cole................... ...................Torres................. Any word on Stevie G travelling? Roy has said anything to indicate either way.
This Utrecht team, dont get beaten at home, My mate lives in Holland, and he says all his mates and work mates that support the likes of Ajax, Feyenoord, AZ, PSV, and if you ask any of them the place they all fear going is to Utrecht, their form is amazing their, they dont lose, they barely concede and they usually score more than 2 goals,. but their away form is terrible, just ask Celtic, they can vouch for both,. and their main man, Ricky van Wolfswinkel will be a real handful,.
There's no stevie or agger or even roy on the plane to holland this morning but roy will be meeting up with the team later as he'll be on a later flight
Fernando Torres is in line to make his first Europa League appearance of the season after being named in Liverpool's 20-man squad for the clash with Utrecht. Torres has only played 45 minutes of European football for the Reds since scoring twice against Benfica in April, but could be given the chance to further step up his match fitness when Roy Hodgson's men take on their Dutch opponents on Thursday night. Hodgson has named a strong squad for the Reds' second group game, with Steven Gerrard and Daniel Agger the only notable absentees from the travelling party. The manager himself is travelling separately to the rest of the squad and will join up with the party when they arrive in Holland. Liverpool squad: Reina, Jones, Johnson, Kelly, Kyrgiakos, Skrtel, Carragher, Shelvey, Poulsen, Lucas, Rodriguez, Spearing, Babel, Meireles, Jovanovic, Cole, Kuyt, Eccleston, Ngog, Torres.
any ideas why hodgson is travelling alone - dont managers usually travel with the rest of the team. I wonder is there some "news" on a takeover or is that just clutching at straws