Liverpool host Chelsea on Tuesday night, a game that promised to be a compelling title showdown before Liverpool lost the arse and lost at home to Swansea. With the relevance of that game now diminished, the build-up to that game has turned to reminiscing the tension of Liverpool/Chelsea duels gone past. Steven Gerrard has interviewed John Terry for BT Sport (to be broadcast on Tuesday), and today's Daily Mail features a sit-down between Jamie Carragher and Frank Lampard. It's absolutely superb, and requited reading for fans of either club. 100
Both reveal some of the on-field utterances which have gone unheard of until now from those ridiculously tense games - clashes in which goals were of such precious rarity that they seemed to come less from a tactical plan than demand a blood sacrifice - but our favourite anecdote comes from a game that bucked the trend. In 2005, Mourinho's Chelsea won a league game 4-1 at Anfield, in which Frank Lampard scored a penalty.
Jamie Carragher tried to get into Lampard's head before he took it, but it ended up costing him. Here's the relevant transcript:
CARRAGHER: Talking about penalties, do you remember the one you took at Anfield? You beat us 4-1 in October 2005. I bet you £100 you wouldn't score as you were getting ready to take it…
LAMPARD: I slipped it under Pepe Reina, didn't I? He dived the right way but it went in!
CARRAGHER: I gave you the money though! £100 wouldn't get you far down here, mind. Probably get you a coffee and croissant!
LAMPARD: You know what I remember from that game? I took a corner in front of the Kop — they'd been giving me loads — so I gave them a little signal. And you didn't like it! You came over and started shouting, "What the **** are you doing?!"
'Down here' refers to the plush London hotel in which the interview was conducted.
You can read it in full here.
