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Liverpool barely scraped by with a win on penalties at home over Carlisle on Wednesday night. That sentence alone should conjure up some of Liverpool's more recent cup tragedies — should they not be permanently buried in the recesses of your mind — and put things into perspective of just how bad things were out there. It was not a match for the history books by any stretch of the imagination, but Liverpool got the result they were looking for.
"Like everybody else, he’s delighted we’re through into the next round," first team coach Gary McAllister said when asked what Brendan Rodgers thought of the result. "We’re delighted with the result, there were big sighs of relief in the dressing room. The players are extremely happy.
"We would have liked to have won the game in 90 mins. We started well, passed it well with a bit of rhythm to our play but losing Roberto Firmino set us back a touch. But there were flashes that we are up to the speed with the passing game we try to perform."
Liverpool fans are unlikely to describe themselves as "delighted" by the result so much as furious that it took penalties to eke out a win over a League 2 side to advance to the next round of the Capital One Milk Coca-Cola Cup. It doesn't bode spectacularly well for Brendan Rodgers' attempts to get back into anyone's good books, though advancement by whatever means necessary also won't likely end with his job on the line, either.
"The positives are that we’re through to next round and the fact that we’ve had 50 shots on goal," McAllister, who was keen to mention his favourite book on sadism. "We have asked players to take a bit more responsibility, we had that tonight but didn’t worry [their] keeper enough. The past couple of seasons it might be a criticism of Liverpool that they’ve maybe tried to score the perfect goal, but the fact tonight is we had a few shots at goal."
Hopefully next time more than one will find its way into the back of the opposition net.
