Venue: Anfield
Date: 07/04/12
Kick-Off: 3:00pm
Liverpool take on Aston Villa at Anfield on Saturday and will be looking to put recent disappointments in the league behind them by defeating the Villans, who are themselves in the midst of a poor league campaign.
Alexander Doni (and not Jose Enrique!) will be taking his place between the sticks for the Reds as Pepe Reina starts his suspension after being sent-off in that shocking display up at Newcastle last week.
For Doni’s, it will be his long-awaited debut since joining from Serie A side Roma in the summer.
The Reds will be looking to sharpen-up in front of goal at the other end of the pitch, ahead of a midweek tie at Blackburn, before facing off against bitter city rivals Everton in the FA Cup semi-final next week. In this paradoxical season of creating so many chances without scoring, no stats typify this better than the facts that Steven Gerrard has the second best shooting accuracy in the league (according to the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index), getting 80% of his 25 shots at goal on target.
To go alongside his captain, Stewart Downing now has the honour of being the player to have had most shots on goal without scoring (57) in the entire Premier League (after Adel Taarabt scored in his last game for QPR). There’s been no word on whether ‘angry’ Andy Carroll will be yanked from the starting XI after last week’s show of petulance when being substituted.
Villa are coming to Anfield on the back of a 4-2 defeat to Chelsea in which former Red Fernando Torres scored for once. It was a match played in difficult circumstances for Villa whose captain, StiliyanPetrov, was sadly diagnosed with Leukaemia prior to the fixture.
As Liverpool look to break their goalscoring voodoo, particularly at home, they face tough opposition in the form of James Collins who has been the busiest defender in the league so far this season, making 334 defensive contributions across tackles, blocks, clearances, and interceptions, averaging one every seven minutes thirty seconds (Player Performance Index) – making him joint-top for blocks, and joint-second for clearances across the league.
Partnering him is former Red Stephen Warnock, who is also joint-second in the league for tackles won this season. Warnock enjoyed an incredible reception on his previous returns to Anfield, especially when he was made captain for the game prior to the Hillsborough memorial and ensured he, and his teammates, paid their respects.
In the previous meeting between the two teams this season it was Liverpool who came away with all three points in a fairly comfortable game for the Reds who prospered (most surprisingly) that day from set-pieces.
L4L Verdict: LIVERPOOL 1-0 Aston Villa
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Downing’s shooting really has been absolutely dreadful, but for me he hasn’t been the worst Liverpool player of the season by a long chalk.
One must wonder, however, why so many players lose all form when they arrive at Anfield. Remember Joe Cole last year? What about the wretched Charlie Adam this year? Leo Messi himself would struggle at Anfield, where something is obviously horribly wrong behind the scenes.