So we travel to our first away game of the season and it may well be at Anfield, but it doesn’t stop me from having hope.

It was encouraging and obviously pleasing to gain 3 points against Spurs with the scorers of Wheater and Mido I thought to myself that they are the perfect scorers in that game. The reason why Wheaters goal was pleasing is it proved that we were right in selling Woodgate to bring on Wheater and the goal is one of many proof positives which brings a smile to us Boro fans, whilst we collected the 7 million we got. With Mido, I think we can all agree, he deserves to score against his old club, with the loss of a lot of weight and the need for a goal to really kick off his season it is a good boost for him, which is to our gain.

On current matters, Liverpool will want their new strikeforce to get their season rolling as they didn’t set the world alight at Scumberland so they will at least want to do it in front of the Kop.

On Boro matters however we will not want to make any mistakes to even slightly replicate the game we had at Anfield last season ( ie  a 32-metre header back to the keeper in order for a pacey Spaniard to slip it home, slappings being dished out by angry younr Frenchmen). If we can play in the same sort of spirit we showed the last time we went to Anfield (bar the mistakes) we could be in for a good game.

I’d expect Gareth to name an unchanged side from the team that beat the Spudz.

Jones, Wheater, Huth, Pogatetz (well done to him for scoring for Austria), Taylor, Aliadiere, O’Neil, Shawky, Downing, Tuncay, Alves.

Liverpool could be the same, but don’t hold your breath this is Rafa Benitez were talking about here.

Reina, Arbeloa, Carragher, Hyppia, Dossena, Alonso, Gerrard, Benayoun, Aureilo, Keane, Torres.

Obviously questions may be raised by the midfield as well maybe Mido if he’s a sub being brought on a little earlier to hold the ball up whether we are winning, drawing or losing.

My heart says if we have learnt from last year we could do well here, however Torres seems to do well against scoring 4 (hence the headline) but with 3 centre backs and Taylor within the back four the space could be somewhat limited.

1-1 Draw (don’t listen to Lawro!) but I wouldn’t be surprised of a late goal from Liverpool.

Come on Boro!

MarkA