Jamie Carragher: What Liverpool have proven in Philippe Coutinho’s absence

Liverpool chalked up an emphatic 4-1 win over Stoke City on Tuesday that left manager Jurgen Klopp purring with delight after they fought back from an early deficit to keep their Premier League title challenge on track. With the New Year’s Eve atmosphere and a full house at Anfield to roar them on, it promises to be a very exciting game. The game is on December 31 and whatever I say tonight can’t win it.

Milner spent most of his career in midfield but has impressed in a new defensive role this season, playing 16 Premier League games to help the Reds to second place in the table.

Joel Matip is not far from returning from an ankle injury, but Ragnar Klavan has been brilliant deputising for the Cameroonian centre-back.

“I am sure a lot of other teams will look at what we did and try to replicate it”.

But not only that, his skill at forging a bond with his players has stood him in good stead for the crunch match, too.

Former German worldwide Hamann, who played 191 times for Liverpool and 54 for City, backs such public displays of emotion, believing they illustrate the team spirit that his compatriot has engendered.

The result was Liverpool’s third straight win, and showed that Klopp runs a pretty nice plug-and-play system.

“I’m always apprehensive about our chances at Anfield, and with good reason – we’ve only won once there in the last 35 years, which is a quite staggering statistic”.

Aguero, City’s top scorer in each of his five seasons with the club, has never scored at Anfield, a stadium that has also proved to be the last unconquered frontier for City since they became one of the richest clubs in the world following Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheikh Mansour’s take over in September 2008.

“He knew he had a wonderful squad at Barcelona and a wonderful squad at Bayern but he had a big influence on the way they played football”. But this is a special case, against a rival team and manager: Klopp will obviously have watched City and have scouting reports, so will he alter his approach to target a particular weakness of City, or simply concentrate on getting things right in his own team? Many people would say that De Bruyne alone could get things going for City, but with such class around him, the Citizens look a menacing force.

“That’s Daniel. He’s really important to us and even if he comes from the bench you can see he’s bringing something extra”.

“But again, for both teams it’s hopefully the same, so they could have the same problems with us”.

“We deservedly took the lead”.