Liverpool aim to continue quadruple hunt with Norwich City visit in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup

0

Fresh off the back of their Carabao Cup triumph at Wembley on Sunday, Liverpool will hope to continue their pursuit of silverware as they host Norwich City in Round Five of the FA Cup.

Sunday’s penalty shootout victory over Chelsea was the Reds’ first domestic cup win in a decade and it has been 16 years since they last lifted England’s showpiece cup competition. Jurgen Klopp himself has never made it past this stage of the competition since he arrived on Merseyside six-and-a-half years ago.

Confidence will therefore be high and after tasting silverware again following last year’s blip, Klopp will be hoping Sunday acts as a platform to further success this season. After a mini-spell of poor form around Christmas, Liverpool have been relentless in their pursuit of Manchester City in the Premier League and have all of the momentum going into this encounter.

Klopp’s team have once again developed a habit for winning games and have racked up nine victories in a row, 10 if you include Sunday’s shootout. A first FA cup winners medal for Klopp would go nicely along with the Carabao Cup, Premier League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup and Champions League prizes.

If Sunday was a celebratory affair, it was also an energy-sapping 120 minutes. Both clubs went toe-to-toe in what was far from a cagey affair but Klopp may look to make some changes to freshen things up and avoid players reaching the ‘red zone’.

Alisson Becker may come back into goal to avoid the goalkeeper going 10 days without a match while the likes of Kostas Tsimikas, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Takumi Minamino will be hoping to get a run out.

Liverpool will definitely be without Thiago Alcantara after the midfielder had to pull out of the Carabao Cup final after picking up a hamstring injury in the warm-up.

Norwich themselves come into this game having not won since their victory over Wolves at Molineux in the previous round of the FA Cup.

Dean Smith has provoked an improvement within the squad but the Canaries are now right back in the relegation dogfight and sit at the foot of the Premier League table.

It remains to be seen whether Smith feels this is a game his side could be doing without or he may have watched Sunday’s final and want to pounce on any possible tiredness within the Liverpool ranks.

Grant Hanley will miss the trip to Anfield due to suspension and Ozan Kabak is doubtful to replace him against his former club.

Both sides met as recently as 10 days ago as Norwich took a surprise second half lead before goals from Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz saw Liverpool claim a comfortable 3-1 win in the end.

Anything can happen in the cup and Smith will be hoping the magic sprinkles on his side as they look to pull off an upset.

Follow us on Twitter @ProstInt

[columns]

[column size=”1/2″][blog type=”timeline” posts=”10″ cats=”133″ heading=”FA Cup” heading_type=”timeline” /][/column]

[column size=”1/2″][blog type=”timeline” posts=”10″ cats=”1072″ heading=”News” heading_type=”timeline” /][/column]

[/columns]

Share.

About Author

Comments are closed.