Liverpool take on City this evening and sadly going, once again, into the pointy end of the season this is Liverpool's most likely chance to win a trophy this season. Despite having 50% more handles than most other cups around, it is the one at the bottom of the list of priorities at the start of the season.
But we are where we are, and given that we've not actually won anything since 2006, which is a bit too long really - it's not quite 34 years without one, but it's still too long.
Of course, we've got quite a stiff task in front of us before we can entertain such thoughts of winning trophies. Man City have the newly found financial weight that has meant they can almost dismiss this competition as a triviality... maybe that is an exaggeration.
They still want to win as much as they can, that is after all the point of this game - but after our 2 recent games at Eastlands / Etihad sponsored by Abu Dhabi Inc Stadium, given the choice, they would rather have had the results fall the way they did. 3 points and losing the first leg 1-0, rather than 0 points and winning the 1st leg 1-0 for example.
Given our league position I would suggest that actually winning something is more important than 5th or 6th place at present.
Of course, we could unravel completely and City walk away with everything - I suspect that this is something that everyone will have to get used to once City get a taste for winning (stuff with big handles - not just 3 handles).
But there is another possibility - One that I have everything crossed for to become a reality. That is that everything gets turned up to 11 at Anfield tonight. OK - It's not a European semi-final like those we became used to for a while - the money we're facing this time comes from a little south of Russia - but when it comes to the crunch I think we can step up this time.
It will be tricky - Silva should be back for them, a big miss from the 1st leg. A player of considerably more quality than Nigel Reo-Coker who wandered through our defence on Saturday with alarming ease, but maybe we did lose focus on the Bolton game, because we knew that this one was round the corner - Unforgivable, but if that is the case, than we really can't let this one slip.
If we play more like we did in the first quarter of this tie and we defend as well as we did in the second, then we are in with a very good chance of getting to Wembley - which it would be nice to get to before they stop referring to it as the 'New' Wembley (if they haven't already - whoever 'they' are I'm not sure.)
With the next 2 quarters if you like, I'm hoping we can pick them off - keep it tight, concentrate and with a bit of luck they might get a bit stretched and we can pick them off, or we could just steamroller them like we did at the back end of last season, when even Andy Carroll played well - if that happens tomorrow (quite a big IF), then I don't think we'll have too much difficulty. Especially with Savic standing in for Kompany - I can't imagine there are too many Andy Carroll types knocking about in Montenegro, so we'll see how that pans out.
With Cardiff waiting for one of us in the final, with no disrespect to Cardiff, ( I love how they always say that on the TV, just before they stick the boot in) whoever wins tomorrow will think that they have done the hard work - which may be true. But football is rarely that simple. I just hope that come the end of February it'll be us winning something which will provide a catalyst for winning a May trophy - hopefully sooner, rather than later.
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