Haifa promise payback bigtime!

Looks like the reds are gonna have their work cut out tommorrow n ite........they'll need to play like cornered tigers...the last time a team founditself in that situation ...they won the world cup...cricket that is.....Imran Khan's world bashing cricket team...enuf said....


Acoording to this article from haaretz.com haifa are to payback to LFC comeing this tuesday.

 

 
Champions League / Haifa set for payback game against Liverpool
 
By Moshe Harush
 
KIEV - Maccabi Haifa said there would be no holds barred as it looked for victory over Liverpool in tomorrow's Champions League third qualifying round second leg, which it is hosting in Ukraine because of the UEFA ban on matches being played in Israel.

Coach Roni Levi said he would be happy with even an ugly win as club officials said it would be pay-back time for Liverpool's unhospitable reception at Anfield two weeks ago, where the English club won 2-1.

Haifa officials said that Liverpool had freshly painted the visitors' locker room, leaving a noxious odor, had switched off the lights an hour into Haifa's final training session, and had cut short the post-match press conference just as Israeli journalists were questioning Liverpool coach Rafa Benitez.
 
The officials said that Liverpool would see tonight that its training session would be cut short exactly after 60 minutes, and that questions from English journalists to Roni Levi would be cut off before they managed to complete a sentence.

One official went as far as saying: "If it was up to me I would spray the locker room with pest-control spray."

Haifa goes into tomorrow night's match needing a 1-0 win to stun Liverpool and to go on to the Champions League group stage at the expense of the English side.

"I hope we pull off a sensation," said Maccabi striker Yaniv Katan, "but our chances are not great."

Haifa held a short training session at the Valery Lobanovskiy Stadium on arrival in Kiev, where it was greeted by surprisingly warm temperatures and high humidity that should at least make it feel at home.

Levi told his players that they had to look for Liverpool's weak points in tomorrow's match. "We know those points and we must take advantage of them," he said.

One thing Levi will have to work on is Haifa's defense. The team has made a habbit of conceding late goals and a strike from Liverpool's Mark Gonzalez cost it a draw in the first leg.

"I wish I had an explanation for it," Levi said. Perhaos we don't no how to play ugly for a result. Perhaps in soccer sometimes you have to play ugly."

There was bad news for Liverpool yesterday as it transpired that it will be without defensive duo Jamie Carragher and John Arne Riise, who both picked up ankle injuries during Saturday's 1-1 Premier League draw with Sheffield United.

Riise's problem looked particularly serious and scans have revealed torn lateral ligaments in his left ankle. Carragher has strained the medial ligament in his left ankle and both are expected out for at least two weeks.

Mark Gonzalez, who scored a late goal to give Liverpool the win in the first leg, said Liverpool would be a different team this time around.

"The second leg will be hard, but we will be different this time," Gonzalez said. "We are fitter now and have played a few more matches, including last weekend's win over Chelsea. And Haifa will have to come out at us to get the goal back. That will leave more gaps for us to exploit with our pace."

Liverpool coach Rafael Benitez added: "We are further down the road to full fitness and will be better for it. Haifa did very well at Anfield, but they were able to sit back and try to frustrate us. They will not be able to do that so much in this second game. They will come forward more and we have the players who can take advantage of that."

One official went as far as saying: "If it was up to me I would spray the locker room with pest-control spray."

Nice people the Israeli's.

No wonder none of their neighbour's like them.

No need for all the sh*t they were giving to Rafa in that press conference.

I hope we thrash them a million times more than I already did.

Bad day for Benítez with press ambush and Gerrard's stomach upset  

If Liverpool touched down in Ukraine painfully aware of the implications of failure to force their way into the Champions League group stage, they were still caught cold last night by the strength of furious discontent among their Israeli opponents. Maccabi Haifa are incensed that the tie has been switched to a neutral venue, with an already potentially hazardous game now laced with an undercurrent of venom.

Rafael Benítez and his players had spent almost two hours on the Tarmac at John Lennon International airport before their plane took off and then a similar time in stifling heat waiting forlornly for their luggage to appear on the carousel at the other end.

However, the Spaniard's day degenerated even further when effectively he walked into an ambush at his pre-match press conference at the team hotel, Israeli journalists echoing the convictions of Maccabi's manager Roni Levy by accusing him of forcing Uefa to switch tonight's second leg away from Tel Aviv.

Benítez had claimed it would be "totally unacceptable" to play the second leg in Israel, yet the relative calm since the ceasefire in the cross-border conflict with Hezbollah has persuaded many, including Levy, to claim that this fixture could have been staged at Haifa's preferred venue after all.

With Liverpool clinging to a slender 2-1 advantage from the first leg and some £12m riding on the return, Benítez could have done without such an awkward confrontation, and seeing Steven Gerrard subsequently sitting out most of the training at the Valery Lobanovsky Stadium with a stomach upset capped a miserable day.

But Benítez was most unnerved by the the ferocity of feeling which erupted in the press conference. Asked why his side were "so afraid to come to Tel Aviv", his insistence that "everyone knows the problems there" was dismissed with Israelis arguing that there had been no violence in the city since the outbreak of hostilities on the Lebanese border, and that Benítez had used Liverpool's standing in the game to force Uefa's hand.

"It is a Uefa decision and there is a reason, no?" he retorted. "It is clear. We are here to play a game of football and we don't need to talk about other things. How many other [Uefa] games will be played in Israel? How many? I need to think about my players, my supporters, my staff. I don't know why you continue with the same questions: we have a lot of respect for Maccabi Haifa, for the supporters and the people there, but we are here to play a football game. Nothing else."

The altercation ended with an open invitation to Benítez to visit Israel, with Levy's own frustrations made worse by the fact that, three years ago, his Maccabi side drew 0-0 with Benítez's Valencia at the Mestalla only to see the second leg switched to a neutral venue in Holland. The Spanish duly won 4-0.

Levy spent this week showing his players clips of the first-leg tie at Anfield and bemoaning what he perceived to have been Liverpool's "dirty tricks" in adopting a physical style of play. Benítez laughed off such mind games, though his side's predicament is starkly serious given Gustavo Boccoli's away goal. Failure to emerge unscathed tonight is inconceivable. The club has spent more than two years attempting to attract new investment without success, with concerns simmering at the level of long-term net debt accrued in the meantime.

Steve Morgan, the club's third largest shareholder, pointed out at February's AGM that those debts stood at £73m, with all creditors taken into account, and there is a new stadium to fund. Some £25m was spent this summer, with Liverpool having budgeted to play in the lucrative group stage. That, more than the political tension surrounding the tie, will heap pressure on the players tonight, although Gerrard is still expected to feature.

"Some of my players have won the league, the Uefa Cup, the Champions League, and they will be OK," Benítez insisted. "Sure, it's been a long day and we are not 100% yet - even if we are fitter than we were two weeks ago - but we have enough experience to cope. Financially, this is really important."

That's just great.  So Stevie's got the sh*t's.

rafa was great in that interview. handle em great. i would have told the c*nts to f*ck right off. But in true Paisley style he batted them off with finesse.

They may see bombing the sh*te out of each other as a normal every day occurence and no great reason for moving the game, but forgive us for not thinking the same.

The irony is though there are parts of Liverpool that remind me of Beirut. Having lived in weither Bootle or Kirkdale all my life, I should know.

Classic quote from one of our reds sites...

GO AND PLAY YOUR NEIGHBOURS!

SORRY, YOU CAN'T DO THAT CAN YOU, YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS OF WIPING MOST OF THEM OUT."

Classic quote, would love it if our players would wear that under their shirts & reveal it when we score.