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Your support makes all the difference.Despite the repetitious nature of the matches which make up the Champions' League, Phil Thompson faces the same formula as the one he encountered when captaining Liverpool to the European Cup in 1981. Victory or elimination.
Such is the gladiatorial nature of next Tuesday's game at Anfield – whoever loses will not make the quarter-finals – that it seems appropriate that the opponents should be Roma. Since Liverpool have no alternative but to win, Anfield will be lifted by the fact that Michael Owen should be fit to lead their attack against a team whose defence he penetrated twice in last season's Uefa Cup victory in the Olympic stadium, although Dietmar Hamann will be suspended.
Typically, as he took his team back to Merseyside from a resolute goalless draw in Barcelona, Thompson was talking of "when we beat Roma", although he knows Liverpool will have to threaten more than they did in the Nou Camp on Wednesday. The Barça coach, Carles Rexach, suggested Liverpool did little more than menace from set-pieces, and the Catalan journalists talked of the Horlicks-like quality of much of their play.
Nevertheless, Thompson usually has the final word. He pinned up newspaper articles in which Frank de Boer had attacked Liverpool's negativity to the dressing-room wall before kick-off and his charges responded just as Bob Paisley's teams did a generation before.
"Sometimes in the 1970s we played magical football, sometimes we bored the socks off people," Thompson said of the squad which won the European Cup three times. "You have to adjust your game to the circumstances and I think things will be in our favour [against Roma]. We have shown in the past we can adapt to the knock-out game when we won last season's Uefa Cup."
Liverpool's caretaker manager said his biggest regret was not overcoming Galatasaray either on Merseyside or in Istanbul, and in open play Rexach's criticism that they were not nearly inventive enough in the Nou Camp held water.
Nevertheless, it was hard to find fault with Emile Heskey on Wednesday. "I thought he gave a tremendous display," Thompson argued. "Emile will have rich veins of goalscoring followed by lean spells but his worth to the team is immense. If you ask any of our players, they would have Heskey in the side every single week."
But, for a side who have managed two goals in their past five Champions' League matches, victory, even at Anfield, against the champions of Italy is some demand. However, this Liverpool team have become skilled at winning when it matters, as at Old Trafford and Elland Road earlier this season. "There is a great desire in this team," said Thompson. "When they want something badly enough, they get it."
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