Gary O’Neil candidly declares what Liverpool can expect from his Ipswich team on Friday
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Ipswich manager Gary O’Neil has said that he ‘fully expects’ his team to claim a result when they host Liverpool at Portman Road on Friday night.The Tractor Boys won their first home game of the season against Sunderland before shipping a 5-2 defeat at Manchester United last weekend, but they still have one more point than the Reds, who’ve drawn their opening two matches against Newcastle and Nottingham Forest.The Merseysiders won 2-0 on their most recent visit to the Suffolk venue two years ago in what was Arne Slot’s first official game in charge of LFC, and the first step on the road to eventual Premier League glory.However, with Liverpool making a shaky start to this campaign, O’Neil is backing his team to prolong the torment for the Reds tomorrow night.O’Neil: Ipswich will go out to win against LiverpoolSpeaking at his pre-match press conference today, the 43-year-old said (via East Anglian Daily Times: “I’m sure they’re thinking they’ve got a chance to add to their points tally, but so do we. That’s the belief we have here…I fully expect us to leave the stadium tomorrow night with more points than we arrived with.” (Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)O’Neil added: “No-one’s moaning about playing Manchester United and Liverpool in the space of six days.
The club has worked so hard to play against the best in the world and we have a real chance of taking something from the game.“It’s not like we’re turning up to see how we do. No, no – we go to win and see if we can take three points, and we back ourselves to do so.
We know the challenges that will be brought, but I’m sure, with the squad we’ve put together, teams will also see that we can hurt them with the quality that we have.”Want more Empire of the Kop coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trustLiverpool can expect a tough test at Portman RoadObviously the Ipswich boss isn’t going to come out and say that his team have no chance of winning tomorrow night, but he’s been quite candid in stating that they’ll be going for three points and won’t bow to Liverpool or park the bus with a low-block formation in the hope of nicking a draw.From looking at how defensively brittle the Reds have been in the early weeks of this season (and throughout last term), O’Neil would be justified in wholeheartedly fancying his side’s chances of picking up a second home win of the campaign.(Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)From an LFC perspective, it has the makings of a classic ambush – a floodlit fixture at a compact stadium against a promoted outfit still riding the crest of a wave after promotion earlier this year, with all the external expectation and pressure on the visitors to emerge victorious.Liverpool have the quality in attack to beat any opposition in the Premier League, and Andoni Iraola has indicated that new signing Bradley Barcola could potentially feature tomorrow night.However, if the Reds are to get their first win of the campaign, they’ll need to be far more defensively secure than they were in their two previous matches, and they’ll have to play with intensity for the full game against an Ipswich side who’ll be well and truly up for taking a high-profile scalp.Given our current standing, it’s one of those fixtures where we’d be quite happy to come away with a scrappy 1-0 victory, but hopefully LFC can claim all three points and deliver a long-overdue convincing performance.