Rodgers still waiting on that lucky break
BRENDAN Rodgers faces his former club tomorrow believing he has not been on the right side of a refereeing decision since he quit Swansea City.
If Liverpool end up progressing to the last eight of the Capital One up thanks to a questionable whistle, they are unlikely to apologise.
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The Reds, after all, reckon they have had a raw deal so far this season.
To his credit, Rodgers did his best not to criticise officials throughout his two years in charge at the Liberty Stadium.
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There were opportunities to grumble which he declined.
This year, however, he has spent plenty of time complaining — and that was before Sunday's contentious Merseyside derby.
Rodgers argued in the build-up to Everton that Liverpool hadn't "got anything this year".
Then came controversy at Goodison, first when Everton scored from a throw-in which should have been Liverpool's and then when an erroneous offside flag denied Luis Suarez a late winner.
"I'm not going to keep going on about officials, because it has been happening to us all season," Rodgers said after a dramatic 2-2 draw.
"But we are disappointed the goal didn't count because, for me, it was an easy decision."
Suarez has been central to more than one of Rodgers's refereeing grumbles already this season.
The former Swansea manager even suggested sarcastically the other day that he would go on holiday when Suarez was given a decision.
It must be said, however, that Suarez has gone down too easily at times.
His antics may be a little frustrating for Rodgers, for the Uruguayan has the talent to win games without all the other stuff.
Whether Suarez will feature against Swansea must be in doubt, for he could do with a rest having played 13 times already for his club this season.
But then attacking options are limited, of course, after Andy Carroll was allowed to leave Anfield in August and Liverpool inexplicably failed to replace him.
Former Swansea loan star Fabio Borini is injured, so Rodgers will have to turn to one of his youngsters if Suarez is to be omitted.
Liverpool deployed a number of their up-and-coming players in the previous round of the competition, when two goals from Nuri Sahin saw them win at West Brom.
As well as Suarez, the likes of Steven Gerrard, Joe Allen, Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger were all rested for that tie.
It will be interesting to see how many of the heavyweights are left out once more tomorrow. Liverpool have bigger fish to fry this season, but Rodgers will want to avoid the embarrassment that would come with defeat by his old club.
Comments
by Hadoken85737
Tuesday, October 30 2012, 5:39PM
“Rodgers moans about the things that do not go his way, but when asked about things that his team get away with, he usually says he did not see it, disagrees with it, or implies there is some kind of bias.
A good example of this is when suarez dived in the box a few weeks ago, it was comical, yet he claimed to not see it and instead focused on suarez getting stamped on in the halfway line.
In an attempt to divert the truth.
I would rather lose against Liverpool tomorrow and win at home in the premier league.”