James Milner: Winning a trophy can right Liverpool’s season

Marko Arnautovic – despite appearing to be in an offside position – netted on the stroke of half-time, which was the only goal of the game and an aggregate score of 1-1 took the tie all the way to penalties.

With Everton holding a 2-1 lead heading into their second leg at Manchester City on Wednesday there is the prospect for a first Merseyside final for 27 years, although the two teams did meet at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final of 2012 in which Liverpool prevailed. “So I said, “Come on then. Anfield Road, a semi-final, it was a special moment”, the German said”.

Much has been made of Liverpool’s recent failure to cope with set plays but they nearly scored from such a situation themselves early in the second half when Firmino lashed Jordan Henderson’s lay-off against the foot of the post.

“We got a win on paper – goodness knows how long it’s been since we won here – but the objective was to get to a Wembley final which we didn’t”. It was a good game for my side against a hard side to play.

Bet365 regard Liverpool as the 4/5 favourites to win and the 1/10 favourites to qualify, while an away win for Stoke is offered at 4/1, and The Potters to progress to the final 6/1.

Liverpool were the better team at the Britannia three weeks ago as Stoke struggling to find the footballing fluency Mark Hughes has instilled in them which has already seen them comfortably beat Manchester City and Chelsea at home.

‘Maybe they like that I’m there because we don’t have that much success! “[Liverpool] is a wonderful city and they deserve it”.

Simon Mignolet, despite having a somewhat shaky game again under the high ball, stepped up to keep his nerve and make two saves during the shootout, denying Peter Crouch and later, in sudden death, Marc Muniesa, to give his side the win.

“I heard they changed their style [under Hughes], but today they played old Stoke football I would say”.

“We practise them but it is probably something we don’t do regularly enough”.

Hughes said: “We are going to really push this”.

When Liverpool evaluate at the end of the season and look at the sort of goals they conceded, I wouldn’t be averse to see them looking towards Shawcross as a solution. “But I try to only use things that I think will help us”.