And giving an update on the central defender on Monday, boss Mark Hughes said: “Thankfully it is not a recurrence of the back injury which required surgery (over the summer) so that is a positive”.
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A 1 – 0 win for Liverpool is the most likely outcome of the match with William Hill and Bet365 offering odds of 11/2 and 5/1 respectively.
Anfield has not been a happy hunting ground for Stoke who have failed to win in their last six visits and Mark Hughes will be hoping that Ryan Shawcross, in particular, and Marko Arnautovic pass late fitness tests (Liverpool have injury problems of their own) but they could struggle to break the hosts down.
“It gets highlighted, like our lack of goals from set pieces gets highlighted”.
“We’ll have a little bit to say about that”.
Hughes said: “There’s no grey areas for us, because we’ve got to win”. We’re looking forward to it. No one has to tell you anything to motivate you for them.
Should things go well for Stoke this evening, Hughes joked that he couldn’t possibly emulate Jurgen Klopp’s glasses-breaking celebration at Norwich “because I wear contacts… they’re less expensive!” We might demonstrate them in different ways, but it doesn’t mean I’m any less delighted when we score at the end.
“We are going to really push this”, he affirmed.
“It is an opportunity we are not going to allow pass by lightly”.
“You always remember cup finals and semi-finals because of the excitement and the atmosphere, and we want to make tomorrow a night to remember”.
“(On Tuesday) we don’t have to think about it because it is a semi-final and it will be go from the first whistle.
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“But we have other good players who will be prepared and ready to come in and we will see how far that takes us”.
