Europa League preview: FC Gomel v Liverpool

Brendan Rodgers

Liverpool’s early European start meant that the competitive Brendan Rodgers era was always likely to begin in one of the continent’s football outposts, and it’s turned out to be Belarus.

Gomel, to be exact, some 4,000 miles to the east, will host the Reds in their first European match since a Europa League exit at the hands of Braga last March. After a gruelling pre-season campaign spent working on fitness in North America, the Rodgers reign has begun by clocking up the air miles.

It’s also begun with more than a few questions raised about the players that the Northern Irishman has inherited.

So far only Fabio Borini has been added to the squad which disappointed last season yet still managed to pick up the Carling Cup and come within a whisker of taking the FA Cup final to extra-time.

The man who almost forced that extra period, Andy Carroll, was named in the squad but hasn’t travelled to Belarus as doubts persist over his future, whilst clouds surround Craig Bellamy, Daniel Agger and Martin Škrtel as Joe Allen and Clint Dempsey appear to be standing by ready for the go-ahead for their switches to Merseyside. Already the Kenny Dalglish days seem firmly in the past.

Rodgers will of course be seeking that fresh outlook as he looks to implement his footballing ideas and philosophy on a Liverpool side who frequently struggled for a pattern of play under their previous boss, and with the former Swansea man saying all the right things as he eases into the kind of job that his self-belief has always told him he’d get, this could provide the perfect, if low-key start.

This is the first of two qualifying rounds that the Reds will have to negotiate in August if they are to make their way into the Europa League proper, and as they travel to a city just 80 miles from Chernobyl they’ll know that any success will have to be put into perspective.

Quite bizarrely, Borini will have plenty of support in Gomel’s Central Stadion as he makes his Liverpool debut in a city which is still home to several affected by the nuclear power plant disaster in 1986. Borini’s family – from Bologna in Italy – frequently took youngsters in from the Gomel area to give them a break from the debris of home during the 1990s, and the 21-year-old has managed to organise tickets for many of the now grown-ups he knew back then. “I think they will have an Italian flag with them,” he said.

Liverpool will surely still be flying the flag for the Premier League in Europe after these two legs, but with fitness perhaps still more important than form ahead of the big domestic kick-off they are unlikely to really hit their straps at the home of the team which finished third in the 2011 Belarusian Premier League, and are currently in the same spot this year.

The youngsters Raheem Sterling and Adam Morgan, who both impressed in pre-season, are in the squad here, and they are likely to mix well amongst the senior players as the Reds’ European campaign gets underway.

It’s hardly Belarus or bust for Liverpool, but Rodgers will be expecting a win, and should get one.

Prediction: FC Gomel 0 Liverpool 2

Mark Jones – follow me on twitter

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