UEFA Europa League – Liverpool Vs FC Unirea Urziceni

The thing is with celebrity siblings is that there's generally a big name and there's generally someone not so famous, hanging on the star's coat tails in the hope that some of the fame and fortune will rub off on them. That's a decent enough analogy to use as the UEFA Cup restarts after it's winter break except that the UEFA Cup is now a dirty phrase, we should be using UEFA Europa League. Over recent years the Cup Winners Cup, the Intertoto Cup and UEFA Cup have all been merged into what is now the Europa League. There is a similar format to the Champions League by which there is a group stage followed by a knockout and in it we have former European champions Atlético Madrid, Benfica, Celtic, Juventus and Liverpool to name but a few. However, in many cases the glory days for those clubs are very much over and so however you dress it, however you market it or whatever you call it a turd is still a turd.







Showing the standard of Romanian football, Unirea Urziceni were in the second tier of national football in 2006, in the third tier in 2003, and qualified for the Champions League this season after winning the league title. Their 7,000 capacity stadium isn't even up to UEFA requirements to host the 2nd leg. And as poorly as Liverpool have performed this season, especially against lower quality competition, this is a game they're not going to lose. Failing to win the Europa League wouldn't be such a big deal but being embarrassed by a weak Romanian side at home would. Liverpool have some rare positive injury news with defender Jamie Carragher returning to the side and midfielder Yossi Benayoun being 50/50; Fernando Torres and Glen Johnson are close to returning but not for this match.

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One thing to mention is the fitness levels of the Liverpool squad - since there are out of contention for all domestic cups they've had a pretty light schedule over the past couple of weeks while the rest of the Premier League clubs are involved in the FA Cup or Carling Cup. Fatigue won't be an issue here. On the flip side, Unirea have been on the two month Romanian winter break so they haven't played a competitive match since 14 December. Although they put up an impressive fight in their Champions League group, the lack of a cutting edge is a large factor here. Of course Liverpool are heavy favorites, the -333 at SIA beats Pinnacle by a few cents with SIA offering a Liverpool win -2500 with a draw being a push or even -10000 for a “double chance” for a Liverpool win or draw for someone who really doesn't like money. Take Liverpool -1.5 for +101 at Pinnacle or -103 at The Greek and start praying they can finally kick start their season.