‘Reds game coming at right time’

LONDON. — Buoyed by Luis Suarez’s return, Liverpool will visit Manchester United in the League Cup tonight eager to inflict more misery on a team reeling from a brutal derby defeat.
The match kicks off at 8:45pm.
Sunday’s 4-1 loss at Manchester City completed United’s worst start to a soccer season in nine years and prompted renewed scrutiny of new manager David Moyes’ methods.

Since succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson, Moyes has seen his side beaten by Liverpool and City and held to a 0-0 draw by Chelsea, leaving the defending champions five points off the pace in the English Premier League.

Another loss to arch-rivals Liverpool would only add weight to the steadily creeping doubts about his aptitude for the job, but striker Wayne Rooney believes tonight’s game has arrived at just the right time.

“We have all grown up, whether it is Manchester, Liverpool or somewhere else, having local derbies,” Rooney told United’s in-house television channel, MUTV.

“It is not nice when you lose one. I have been there as a fan and now as a player. Thankfully we have another massive game against Liverpool.

“It is the ideal game for us. Any game against Liverpool, whether it is a friendly, Capital One Cup or Premier League, is massive.
“We have to try and get the victory so we can put this defeat to the back of our minds.”

Rooney appears to have put an unsettled close-season to the back of his mind, scoring four goals in his last three games, and Liverpool will hope that Suarez is able to draw a line beneath his own recent trials and tribulations.

The Uruguayan will be playing in his first official club game since April 21, having now completed a 10-game ban for biting Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic last season.

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers chose an unfortunate turn of phrase when he said the striker was “champing at the bit”, but Suarez’s return falls at a timely juncture after Saturday’s surprise 1-0 loss at home to Southampton.

Suarez tried to force through a move to Arsenal during the close season, even accusing Liverpool of breaking promises made to him, but Rodgers is confident that he will be forgiven by the club’s fans.

Referencing Liverpool’s backing of Suarez after he was banned for racially abusing United left-back Patrice Evra in 2011, Rodgers said: “This club has given every single player here everything in the time I’ve been here, and none more so than Luis.

“He will show that and demonstrate that in his performances and that is what the players and people want to see. They want to see him with a red shirt on, fighting for the club.

“The great thing about this football club is no matter what a player has done — or supposedly said — the supporters are 150 percent behind every player that pulls on that shirt and they back them to the hilt.

“I am sure that is something we will see and aligned to that will be his commitment, and that will be nothing more than I would expect.
“I have no doubt, having been out, he will be even hungrier but his commitment and fight for the cause will still be the same.”

Rodgers was expected to decide late yesterday whether or not to hand Suarez a starting berth in the third-round tie at Old Trafford.
Both managers are expected to rotate their starting line-ups, but Robin van Persie has been ruled out of tonight’s match due to a groin strain.

The Dutch international has been nursing a groin injury he suffered in training recently which forced him to miss United’s shock 4-1 defeat by Manchester City in a dramatic derby encounter last weekend.

Moyes had hoped to have Van Persie, the leading scorer in England last season with 30 goals in all competitions, available for the visit of Liverpool.

Now Moyes has said the 30-year-old is poised to miss the match, and is doubtful for the defending champions’ forthcoming Premier League match against West Bromwich Albion.

“I don’t think he’ll play,” Moyes told a news conference yesterday. “But I think he has an outside chance for Saturday.”
Moyes admitted the manner of his side’s 4-1 thrashing by City, his first derby since succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson as United manager, had left him stunned.

“It shocked me, but when you’re a football manager for the length of time I’ve been you are always going to have shocks,” Moyes said.
“But it’s gone now so I can’t do anything about it,” the former Everton boss added. “You can’t dwell too long on it. We’re looking to get the next game started and trying to win.

“It’s always a big game whenever you play any cup tie, but especially I think when you play Liverpool against Manchester United. It maybe takes on a bigger significance than people would expect.

In recent years the League Cup has been seen as a “development” competition by managers of leading English clubs, who’ve often rested their first-choice players for more important Premier League or European assignments. — AFP.