Liverpool mightn’t be in the Champions League this season, but Jamie Carragher has claimed that one potential quarter-final tie could benefit the Reds later in the campaign.
Europe’s premier club competition resumes next week, with Manchester City and Arsenal the two remaining English representatives, and the ex-Anfield defender is hoping that they’ll both progress through the round of 16 and then meet each other in the next stage of the tournament.
Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, the 46-year-old said: “I’d love Arsenal to get City in the quarters because I think Arsenal are one of the few teams who could knock City out.”
When Gary Neville asked if that was to bolster Liverpool’s hopes of winning the Premier League, Carragher replied: “Yeah because when you play an English team in Europe everything ramps up in Europe. The press, everything. The league games before and afterwards, this game just becomes so big and that probably would help Liverpool. But we don’t want City to win it again, do we?”
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If Carragher gets his wish of an all-English quarter-final, it’d see Liverpool’s two title rivals face each other three times in 18 days, with Arsenal travelling to the Etihad Stadium for a Premier League clash on 31 March and the two-legged Champions League tie falling in mid-April.
That scenario would inevitably see those two clubs garner plenty of media attention and quite possibly test each other rigorously, which may help to take some spotlight off us in our hunt for domestic glory.
The 46-year-old can cite a similar precedent from 16 years ago, when he was in the LFC team which played the Gunners three times in a week as a league fixture fell in between two European games against the north Londoners.
Of course, even if we were to get an Arsenal-Man City quarter-final, the onus is still on Liverpool to ensure that they’re still firmly in the Premier League title picture by mid-April, and it’s also possible that we could face an all-English European tie at that time against either West Ham or Brighton.
Still, any potential pitfall for Pep Guardiola’s side would be welcomed, given their enviable track record for relentlessly charging towards eventual silverware in the second half of a season, and a Champions League quarter-final against the Gunners would prove them with a serious test.
#Ep100 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones🎙️