It's Red vs. Blue All Over Again!

Big match tomorrow when Liverpool take on Chelsea at Anfield. It's way too early in the season to consider this a must win game for the Reds, but picking up the three points here would go a long way towards showing they can make a serious push for the title this season. With Man U looking less than impressive out of the gates the winner of this game will rightfully be considered the early front-runner this season.

As for the Liverpool lineup... I'm no Rafa and I know it, so rarely will you see me throw out my Starting XI, but I'm going to take a stab at it here. I preface this by saying that although Rafa has made it clear that Steven Gerrard will be available for tomorrow's tilt I am hoping that he will start on the bench and that he will not have to play at all due to the Reds having the game firmly in hand. Anyhow, here's my XI:

Reina
Finnan Carragher Agger Riise
Pennant Alonso Mascherano Benayoun
Kuyt Torres

Bench:
Itandje
Hyypia
Gerrard
Babel
Voronin

Like I said already, I don't see the need to start Gerrard and I hope we won't need him off the bench. There's no doubt in my mind that Kuyt and El Niño will be starting up front and as much as I love Peter Crouch, I think Voronin has earned the spot on the bench ahead of him. If anything I would maybe have Crouch on the bench in place of Babel, but that would be a very limiting set up.

As for a prediction, I think Liverpool will win 2-0 thanks to goals from Riise and Kuyt. I would love to see Torres open his account against Chelsea, but my gut tells me it will be Dirk instead. That's not to say Fernando won't have an impact, just no goals to show for it. Then again, hopefully I'm wrong and Liverpool win by 10 and Fernando, Kuyt, and Pennant all have hat tricks.