Tonight sees Udinese visit Anfield in our second Europa League group game and it could be a pretty tricky fixture against an Italian side who have plenty of experience, despite having a start to their league campaign that has been pretty similar to ours, with only one win in their first six matches.
It’s difficult to know what sort of side we should put out for the game, Brendan Rodgers has started making wholesale changes for our midweek games and our weekend form has certainly improved as a result, though our second string hasn’t yet come up against a team as strong as tonight’s opposition. The likes of Carragher, Coates, Shelvey, Downing and Henderson can come in and, while three of them are young, they’re not complete rookies and all have first team experience. The major decision is who to play alongside them, should it be youngsters like Suso, Jack Robinson, John Flanagan, Andre Wisdom and Samed Yesil, or should it be a sprinkling of first team regulars like Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez, Joe Allen, Nuri Sahin and Glen Johnson? I think with the lack of travelling involved it would be a mistake to not at least have a bench full of established players, even if the boss decides to begin the game giving our youngsters a chance to impress.
Prioritising the league is the right choice, we need to finish as high as we can and it would be gutting to be completely out of contention for a top four spot by November, but by the same token it would be wrong not to try to win the Europa League. It’s extremely unlikely we’ll win the Premier League this season which leaves us in the hunt for three trophies and we should give all we can to land all three of them. Our team under the new manager is a work in progress and will take time to gel, but nothing would help buy the whole process some extra time like landing silverware, especially in your first season at the club. I think we’ve already made a big step in our group by winning away at Young Boys and we should use the three home games to try to get the points we need to qualify. Four wins would surely see us qualify for the knockout phase of the competition and if home results go our way we can then afford to rest our key players for the away trips to Italy and Russia, where they will not only avoid ninety tough minutes but also the travelling that is involved. A positive result tonight will go a long way in taking the pressure off four our remaining group fixtures, a defeat will leave us with it all to do.
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