Liverpool v Portsmouth – Aquilani and Maxi in for Kuyt and Lucas

Premier League – Monday 15th March 2010

Liverpool v Portsmouth

Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez has made two changes from the side that lost to Lille on Thursday, Dirk Kuyt and Lucas both dropped to the bench for the visit of Portsmouth.

In their places come Alberto Aquilani and Maxi Rodriguez for a game the manager knows his side are under massive pressure to win. Portsmouth might be bottom of the table, but with them beating Liverpool on their own turf earlier in the season Rafa is under no illusions about the task at hand. He’s also under no illusions about how many people want to see this game end in defeat for the Reds.

Aquilani knows he has to take this chance to show why the under-fire and undermined Benitez paid £17m for him in the summer, as does former Portsmouth right-back Glen Johnson who cost a similar amount in the summer, with a large chunk of his fee money owed to the Reds for the sale of Peter Crouch. Former Reds right-back Steve Finnan starts for Portsmouth.

Liverpool: 25 Reina, 2 Johnson, 23 Carragher, 5 Agger, 22 Insua, 20 Mascherano, 4 Aquilani, 17 Maxi, 8 Gerrard, 19 Babel, 9 Torres
Subs: 1 Cavalieri, 16 Kyrgiakos, 34 Kelly, 15 Benayoun, 21 Lucas, 18 Kuyt, 24 Ngog

Portsmouth: 21 Ashdown, 3 Rocha, 7 Hreidarsson, 16 Finnan, 39 Belhadj, 5 O’Hara, 8 Diop, 11 Brown, 35 Wilson, 9 Piquionne, 24 Dindane
Subs: 31 O’Brien, 4 Mokoena, 6 Mullins, 14 Owusu-Abeyie, 22 Hughes, 19 Webber, 27 Kanu

Referee: Stuart Attwell
Assistant referees: Phil Sharp, Michael Murphy
Fourth official: Howard Webb

Kick-off: 8pm

9 thoughts on “Liverpool v Portsmouth – Aquilani and Maxi in for Kuyt and Lucas”

  1. Jim, I know this site is only a hobby but do you seriously think people read these articles? They are so infrequent and out of date within minutes as to make them utterly useless. You can do better than this, you did do better than this. Surely for your own satisfaction you’d prefer to write something that people actually want to read.

  2. @ Stephen……… I like reading Jims articles because they normally not full of bais and mybe you dont know Jim only right when he is felling well. sorry to but in Jim

    keep it up and thank you jim

  3. Jim,

    I don’t know if you’re aware of this but your forum crashed on Friday night and is still down. As there are quite a few of us who discuss all LFC matters there it would be good if you could fix it pronto please.

  4. Having seem the LFC vs MU game, the sooner the season is over the better. 4th place is gone. The Manager put Mini Rod and Lousy Lucas in place of Yossi and Ryan, even the commentator said twice that Lucas was no good and how good is a players you pay nothing for. The M.U 2nd goal could be seen to be coming long before it happended and yet no substitues until 70 to 83 minutes. Very poor Management.
    If there is any hope the Manager will move on and so will the 2 owners. The Rhone group is only a stopgap and is not the real fix, we need somebody with real money to come in and invest in the assets, the players and a new Manager. Where is Dubai?

  5. Just Thank god Dubai did not buy us, all the projects they are involved in around the world are on hold and they are in the verge of bankruptcy.

  6. Jim,

    You don’t seem to visit this site very often. The Forum has been down for nearly a week now and because there’s no way to contact you it can’t be fixed.

    When you eventually read this please consider adding a “Contact Me” link so we can report problems.

    Thanks.

  7. The press published that 20 Mil for Hazzard was to high for LFC, if that is the case, then what hope have LFC of getting anyone realy good if 20Mil is more than the club can afford. Villa is selling for 40 Mil.
    Regretably LFC is running with the also rans and that spells dome.

  9. LFC no sooner play some wonderful football against Sunderland with even the tricks being in evidence and Gerrard relishing his favoured central roll and we read the Manager may moove him elsewhere. This makes no sense to me, Gerrard in the centre gives balance to the team. I do wish the Manager would burn his book of tactics and let the best balanced team do its job, this was the philosophy of Bob Paisley, his famous quote was “we don’t go in much for tactics, we put a balanced side out and let them cope with the opposition, Shankly expressed much the same ideas.
    Regretably the Manager appears to have run out of ideas, run the course and LFC needs new ideas from new blood.

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