watch liverpool vs blackburn english premiership live stream
Liverpool's match today sees the return of trusted faces in the side after they were rested for the midweek trip to Italy where Liverpool played Napoli in the Europa League. Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Raul Meireles and Lucas Leiva are the players which will be contention for places in the starting lineup. Glen Johnson will also be back after an injury layoff and Jamie Carragher and Daniel Agger are a possibility to play after injury and illness setbacks. Dirk Kuyt will have to sit it out however as he is still being troubled with ankle injury.
Despite Liverpool's hardships this season in the board room where the ownership is in question and also out on the pitch where poor results have mounted up and see the club languishing in the drop zone, manager Roy Hodgson is still positive and defiant stating that the struggles will make them a stronger unit. Their position at present is most unusual for the club who always tend to finish in the top 4 in recent years and have seen them make glorious assaults in Europe with 2 champions league final appearances in the last 5 years, winning one and losing one. The club are struggling so heavily at the moment that talk of qualifying for the europa league next season seems very far fetched but Hodgson believes the club will fightback the deficit and prove critics wrong.
"I think we are getting stronger as a team and a squad and we are becoming more organised in the sense of how I would like to see us organised" he told Press Association Sport. "As far as I am concerned it is still a work in progress and we have an awful lot of rebuilding to do. But having gone to Naples after a derby defeat and getting a good goalless draw with a team no-one expected to get that is positive going into the game on Sunday. What we need is a bit of luck. When you are down there and you are not getting the victories the pressure builds up and confidence takes a battering and everyone starts to question things. There is lots of speculation and negative things being said but we understand that. It is par for the course and that is what football is. But the only way you can get out of it is keep working hard, keep trying to get those results and then hopefully, when you have done it, it will make you stronger for it. Most of the players and myself are more accustomed to pats on the back than kicks in the teeth but we also know that in football kicks in the teeth are part of the game. What you do is try to keep as many teeth as you can and try to get on with it."
Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce believes opposite number in Anfield should be given time to fix the troubles on the pitch for Liverpool and that he can't be blamed for their shortcomings this season.
"I always thought this would be a year of transition for a club that has sold off a lot of its players and Roy has a huge task, but I didn't think they would have as few points as they have at the moment,'' said the Blackburn manager. "All the pressure of the takeover and the money situation has obviously affected the team. There's a healthy atmosphere in a football club that you can feel that there's something great and it's building, and there's the opposite which has created a knock to that normal Liverpool feeling. It's one of the institutions of football made great by the late, great Bill Shankly and that has declined now, the feeling has been lost and it's a great shame, and that's what they must grasp back. It's not just down to Roy Hodgson, it's the structure of the club as a whole, building the atmosphere back. I feel for Roy, he seems to be bearing the brunt of the blame. If he gets enough time he will get it right."
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