Chelsea pose massive test to Liverpool’s revival in League Cup semi-final

Richard Jolly argues why Liverpool can prove their recent revival is genuine when they take on Chelsea in the League Cup semi-finals.

Liverpool were victorious on Saturday at Aston Villa but beating to Chelsea to reach the League Cup final will be a much bigger test. Clive Mason/Getty Images

Chelsea have opened up a five-point lead at the Premier League summit and have just recorded their biggest away win under Jose Mourinho, a 5-0 victory at Swansea.

Yet, in one respect, they go into tonight’s Capital One Cup semi-final first leg with an inferior record. “Liverpool are the form team of the Premier League,” proclaimed the partisan Liverpool Echo.

It requires a selective interpretation of the facts but Brendan Rodgers’s side have only lost once in 14 matches in all ­competitions.

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Mourinho’s team have been beaten twice, even if they do have more wins (10-8) in that same spell.

Yet Liverpool’s fortunes have turned since the nadir of their season: November’s diabolical 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace.

They have gone from 12th to eighth and some of their initially unimpressive summer signings — Emre Can, Adam Lallana and Lazar Markovic in particular — have begun to excel and gel.

Yet it prompts questions as to whether the Anfield renaissance is merely providing temporary respite or is to lead to a lengthier upsurge — whether results have turned by accident or by design.

Certainly Rodgers deserves huge credit for the inventive, imaginative way he has reorganised his team.

His 3-4-2-1 system suits Lallana, Philippe Coutinho, Alberto Moreno and Mamadou Sakho particularly well.

It gives them four men, and a numerical advantage Rodgers wants, in the centre of midfield while shielding slower players, such as Steven Gerrard and Lucas Leiva.

Part of a manager’s job is to react to changing circumstances and Rodgers has reacted well to adversity.

Yet as this was the fifth formation used this season, it is not so much Plan B as Plan E. Perhaps he stumbled on a solution; it certainly does not feel part of a grander strategy.

Neither did the deployment of Raheem Sterling as a striker.

It could be dismissed as a stop-gap measure until Daniel Sturridge is finally fit again but the winger was only thrust forward when Mario Balotelli was deemed too unpredictable and Rickie Lambert too immobile.

Fabio Borini, who scored as a starter at Aston Villa on Saturday, was told to leave last summer and omitted from the matchday 18 for four autumn games, even when Liverpool had no striking substitute.

Borini is not a one-off. Lucas was deemed surplus to requirements last summer and, annoyed at the way he was treated, still wants to leave.

He was recalled in a desperate bid for solidity, which he has supplied; he has not lost in his past 13 appearances.

Sakho, too, vanished from contention, to the bemusement of many, only to resurface on the left of the back three.

It seems Rodgers’ rejects are performing, though not necessarily for him.

Meanwhile, although the Northern Irishman is celebrating the versatility of Can and Markovic now, certainly there were few suggestions when they were recruited that the German midfielder was expected to operate as a centre-back or the Serbian winger was likely to be deployed as a wing-back.

Admirably as both have done, the suspicion is both will be exposed in unfamiliar defensive duties and it could be argued that Markovic was, when he struggled at Burnley.

An examination of Liverpool’s run is instructive. They have only faced two of the top seven teams in the division and lost to Manchester United.

They crashed out of the Uefa Champions League in a poor display against Basel.

Had it not been Gerrard’s time-honoured capacity to make a difference, Liverpool may have been knocked out of the FA Cup by League Two AFC Wimbledon.

Liverpool were outstanding against Swansea, exuberant against Arsenal and deserved to beat both Sunderland and Villa.

But they were soporific versus Stoke and Sunderland, decidedly lucky to defeat Burnley and threw away a two-goal lead at home to Leicester.

There has been no defining result, no concrete proof of dramatic improvement.

It is why Chelsea’s visit is not about silverware but about whether a revival was built on sand or stone.

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