All set for a goal feast

Nov 10 2007 By Mark McKenna, Liverpool Daily Post

View From The Stands

FIVE wins on the bounce and the players will be going into this game brimming with confidence. For us fans, we’re going into the game probably in the highest spirits we’ve been in since dodgy mullets and muzzies were the rage in the 1980s.

While the Nurnberg result was a sign that we’re now establishing ourselves as a team on the European circuit, the whole occasion delivered the perfect ingredients that have been missing in the past 20 years.

While fans of certain clubs take European excursions for granted, the success on and off the pitch in Germany for the club gave Evertonians a satisfaction and pride that has been missing for a generation.

I notice the “Moyes has taken us as far as he can” Blues have been remarkably mute in the past couple of weeks. Having shown he is capable of doing well domestically, the signs are now there that we’re learning on the European stage.

Yes, Moyes may have skipped over the chapter about timing of substitutions in his Manager’s Textbook, but the man has brought us on light years from where we were five years ago.

Would it be ideas above our station to think we can go to Chelsea and win? Looking at bank accounts, the answer would be yes, but going on form we’re rightly going there thinking we can get a win.

With no Terry or Cech in this game, I hope we go at Chelsea and put them under pressure. Boasting possibly our strongest ever compliment of strikers in Yakubu, Johnson, Vaughan, Anichebe and McFadden, Moyes has the option to mix and match to choose whichever combination of strikers will exploit the opposition’s defence.

While I can see us scoring in this game, sadly I can’t see us keeping a clean sheet.

The cost of our increasing enterprising play has been a less solid defence. Goals certainly beckon here, so let’s hope the hardest decision is guessing which striker will be our hero tomorrow.