Preview: Stoke City - Carling Cup

Wednesday night see us travel to Stoke-on-trent for the fourth round clash with Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium.

Without European football this year we rely heavily on the domestic competitions, and we should be taking this seriously. So far Kenny has been, naming relatively strong squads against Exeter and Brighton.

It's hard to predict who will play for us tomorrow night but i will be disappointed if a weakened team is announced, highly unlucky though as i see this as a winnable competition this year.

Stoke City are formidable opponents that are especially strong at home thier direct style of play and set piece specialties have un done many teams in the EPL this season including us, with thier 1-0 win back in September.

Liverpool need to match Stoke in the air, to be a chance tomorrow, and recently that has been one of our weak points, we wont be able to play a direct passing game and we should try and focus on short quick passing to feet to dismantle Stoke.

Stoke have a few key players that should be closely watched if they play.

Rory Delap can not only pass the ball well, find space where there is none but he's also serious threat from the long throw, not many team in the world have a player that can hurl the ball into the box like Delap can and that always makes it difficult to defend against

 We all know about Peter Crouch from his time with us at 'pool, and he hasn't been a regular starter for Stoke since signing for them from Tottenham this year. He's a difficult customer with very few players around with his height and aerial ability. Not many players his size are good with the ball at his feet too, certainly a threat to any visiting team.

Tony Pulis has a well oiled machine at Stoke, they are hard to break down, physical and play a direct style of football. To beat them tomorrow we need to play the ball on the floor, quickly and use our pace and creativity to break down the Stoke defence.

I predict a tight game with pool to come out 2-1 winners!