It’s a great time to be playing this disjointed side

Liverpool’s second Premier League match of the season kicks off tonight in Manchester with the Reds facing a second successive top-four rival.

City’s millions in the transfer market has seen the likes of Yaya Toure, James Milner, Mario Balotelli and David Silva join them this summer to swell the already bulging array of expensive signings at the club, while Liverpool are yet to make a signing this summer costing more than £5m.

Both clubs were in mid-week action in the Europa League, though neither side should feel too worried about tiredness taking hold as a result – Liverpool rested over half the team which played against Arsenal on the opening day of the Premier League season and Man City have enough senior players to field two strong sides.

After watching City last weekend against Spurs, it seems like a good moment to play them – a lot of signings have arrived in a relatively short space of time and they are still a work in progress in terms of organisation and working together.

In contrast, Liverpool’s second half display against Arsenal showed that what we might be lacking at the moment in terms of attacking cohesion is more than made up for by defensive solidity; Hodgson (as with most other managers) has made defensive organisation a priority from which to lay the foundations of building the rest of the team’s play from.

City can more or less take their pick with who they want to start up front tonight; Silva, Wright-Phillips and Tevez started as the attacking trio against Tottenham but Santa Cruz, Jo, Adebayor, Balotelli, Adam Johnson or – who knows – even Robinho could feature against Liverpool tonight.

Whilst having such a wide choice is potentially great for Mancini, in the short term the pitfalls of chopping and changing and playing with players unaccustomed to each other were apparent last weekend as Tevez barely linked with his attacking teammates, while they did not fill in the central attacking position when Tevez dropped deeper.

By contrast, all of Liverpool’s likely starting defensive quartet have played with each other for quite a while now and show a good understanding of holding the defensive line and playing in tandem with each other. The likely back four will be, as against Arsenal, Johnson-Carragher-Skrtel-Agger, unless Agger is deemed to be not fit to play as a result of his head injury last week. In that case Fabio Aurelio could be in line for his first league start since his re-signing.

In midfield and attack Liverpool’s team selection is almost as straight forward, a fit Mascherano should take his place in centre midfield with Kuyt and Jovanovic occupying the flanks. Gerrard will also be in the centre, though it remains to be seen if he is left alongside Mascherano or, as I suspect, moved further forward to take the place of the suspended Joe Cole with Lucas sitting in the deeper role.

I expect Torres to start, giving the Reds a huge boost. He may only be able to manage around an hour tonight but his presence on the pitch will galvanise the Reds and give the City defence, so often terrorised by the likes of Peter Crouch and Gareth Bale last weekend, an awful lot to think about.

City drew 0-0 with Spurs but in reality, if not for goalkeeper Joe Hart, it could have been a very different story. He made four or five exceptional saves in the first half to keep out Defoe and co., and if the defensive lineup of the home side tonight is as profligate in giving chances away to the opposition I expect the likes of Torres and Gerrard to be a little less forgiving than Tottenham were.

It would certainly be in Liverpool’s best interests tonight to start fast out of the blocks if Torres is playing – he has shown in matches before when coming back from injury that he can be very good early on in the game but tire considerably as it goes on, so we should be aiming to give him 2 or 3 decent chances in the opening exchanges if at all possible.

For me, the Reds can pick up a great win tonight. I think City are still very much in the learning process of playing with each other while the Reds seem to be more concerned with unifying once more as a team at the moment. I believe they are there for the taking if we are brave and strong, and while it is never going to be a walk in the park against such an expensively assembled side, with genuine quality players, I do think we have the discipline in defence and goal threat in attack to trouble them.

You can never account for a moment of individual brilliance from an opposition player and in Tevez, Johnson and Balotelli they have three players more than capable of making something from nothing, but if Carragher and his fellow defenders are as staunch in their work as they were against Arsenal, we should be able to repel most of their attacks, especially if they are as unpracticed and disjointed in the build up as they were last week.

For me, I’m going for a 2-0 Liverpool victory – not necessarily reflecting a two goal margin of being better than them, but as a result of hard work, disciplined performances and – for once! – taking our chances when they come. Torres to score the first, and Jovanovic to open his Reds account!

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