When we played Borussia Dortmund back in 2016, their supporters seemed to feel that we were only there to make up the numbers and that J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s former team would brush us aside with ease. In the end we left with a more than respectable 1-1 draw and that Liverpool team was a lot weaker than the current iteration. Yes, we lost 5-0 in the league game against City earlier in the season and if you\u2019re looking at the Premier League matches for information then they won 8-4. Yet the sending off of Sadio Man\u00e9 completely changed the complexion of that game and we were very much still in it before that happened. Presuming that the European referees aren\u2019t quite as card-happy as Jon Moss was, what will happen when it\u2019s eleven-versus-eleven for the ninety? Hopefully we\u2019ll find out – and hopefully we\u2019ll be pleased with the answer.<\/p>\n
Depending on the result of our game at The Etihad and the overall tie, there\u2019s a real chance that this match could suffer a little from \u2018after the Lord Mayor\u2019s show\u2019 syndrome. Win and the excitement of a European Cup semi-final will make this one seem entirely irrelevant. Lose and the game will be full of actual importance but an entirely deflated atmosphere. No one will be in the mood to play it, from the lads on the pitch to the folks in the stand. Yet if we are knocked out of the Champions League then ensuring a top four finish in the Premier League will take on added importance and this may be the perfect game to get us back on track. If we\u2019ve beaten City then we\u2019ll be wanting to continue the feel-good factor and give the players a raucous return.<\/p>\n
LFC 2 – AFCB 2 (’16-’17)<\/p><\/div>\n
I\u2019ll be honest, I expect us to take three points from Bournemouth regardless of the result of our Champions League encounter. My feeling is that, of our final five game, we\u2019ll win three, draw one and lose one. Which order we do that in is obviously the thing we\u2019d all love to know now, if I\u2019m right. Yet I really don\u2019t think that Bournemouth will give us much trouble. They haven\u2019t travelled particularly well since the turn of the year, losing 4-1 to Huddersfield Town, 3-0 to Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup and only getting a 2-2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion. In amongst all that, though, they beat Chelsea 3-0 to mean that we can\u2019t take three points for granted. Whatever happens, we\u2019ve got an exciting, and season-defining, few matches in front of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every now and again I do these pieces, looking in at the state of the football club and what\u2019s to come. More often than not it\u2019s a look at the next ten games, sometimes specifying one competition and others looking at them all. Now, as the Premier League and Champions League take a breather for some entirely pointless internationals, it felt like the right time to look at our next five games across both of those entities. It might feel to most supporters as though Europe is the only thing to concentrate on, but I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s true. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1213,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions\/1213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}