Shocking stat of the day: Liverpool have not won a single Monday night fixture under Rafa Benitez.
We have won on Mondays on three occasions but each was during the afternoon either on Boxing Day or the New Years full League programmes. On Monday nights our record reads:
20/09/05 v Man U (a) 1-2
21/01/08 v Villa (h) 2-2
01/12/08 v West Ham (h) 0-0
19/01/09 v Everton (h) 1-1
24/08/09 v Villa (h) 1-3
09/11/09 v Birmingham (h) 2-2
Pld. 6 W 0 D 4 L 2 F 7 10
It’s pretty depressing stuff and in the case of our last Monday night fixture ESPN took the piss pitting us against our bogey team in our bogey fixture slot.
The good news is the antidote is at hand. It is Wigan’s raison d'être to assist Liverpool FC in banishing hoodoos.
- In 2005-06, Peter Crouch hadn’t scored in his first 18 appearances until Wigan came to town.
- In 2006-07, Liverpool hadn’t won or scored from open play in their first 7 League away games until we visited the JJB.
- In 2007-08, Yossi Benayoun scored his first League goal for Liverpool at the JJB.
- In 2008-09, Rafa had failed to beat a team managed by Steve Bruce in the League in 6 attempts until Bruce showed up at Anfield managing Wigan.
(The 2007-08 example isn’t the best but I preferred it to: In 2007-08, Wigan had failed to take a point from or score against Liverpool in 5 attempts until they visited Anfield – not really a hoodoo we wanted to end!)
I am confident we will do the business at the JJB. We’ve got key players back fit (there’s even a possibility Johnson might make his return from injury) and with Stevie in the middle and Yossi and Torres back in the side, we actually played some attacking football at times against Blackburn for the first time in a very (very) long time. It was great to see and I hope to see much more of it in the remainder of this season.
No comments:
Post a Comment