Liverpool Preview

"All the wide players seem to have had a bit of a break at some point - Dennis is out at the moment and Darren Ambrose was suspended and injured earlier on in the season. But Jerome has come on in the last couple of games and livened things up.” Alan Curbishley

I am going to have serious doubts about the direction we are going in if Jerome doesn’t start tomorrow night at The Valley.
Most of the Charlton blogs I frequent have correctly identified that he is almost the only player at the moment willing to run with the ball and make things happen for the side.
Liverpool will likely play Finnan at right back, and I fancy that Jerome can give him a bit of a torrid time down the flank.

As for the rest of the side I don’t really have any new comments to make to be honest. You all know what I think of the players in our line up, and if you don’t you can be reminded here and here.
If the online community are to be used as a yardstick, its obvious that most of us are pretty disillusioned with our prospects right now. A win against Liverpool would of course banish some of the gloom that has descended upon SE7 recently, but I just can’t see us putting the ball in the net against this team.

Take the Chelsea result away from their recent form and you will see that they have won 11 or their last 13 premiership encounters, conceding only 5 goals during the course of that run. Yet, they have lost both previous games that they have played in London this term.
As a general rule they don’t seem to concede goals in open play, but the frailties of their zonal marking system have recently been pulled apart on Sky, which means that set pieces are the most likely area in which we can cause them some damage.

Work commitments mean that I won’t be able to get to The Valley for this match, which is a shame because I wanted to experience first hand what the atmosphere would be like.

I have talked here before about the boo boys in the covered end recently, and if we were to go a goal or two down tomorrow I expect they will be out in force again.
These people pay their money just like the rest of us, and because of that I suppose they are as entitled to vocally criticise the team as the rest of us are to vocally encourage them, but lets try and get behind the side tomorrow night lads. Things obviously aren’t great at the moment, and be that as it may, the last thing we need is the player’s heads dropping any lower than they must already be. The know they are in poor form, but they are also much more likely to turn it around if the noise coming from the covered end is positive rather than negative.

Mind you, saying that, my prediction isn’t positive at all. As much as I try not to vocally chastise the team, I’m not confident in our ability to beat an egg at the moment, let alone the European Champions…

Cynic Athletic’s Prediction – 2-0 Defeat (Crouch, Gerrard)