Spanish press claim teams have already been decided

If you thought you were going to have to wait until next Wednesday to find out the starting line-ups for the Champions League final, you were quite wrong: our amigos in the Spanish press have peered into the future, and brought the teams back to the present for your consideration.

AS claim Pep Guardiola has already settled upon his formation, with the only debate being the left-back position. They believe Seydou Keita will be played out of position over Sylvinho and Martín Cáceres, but fail to give a reason (we suspect it is because he has played more this season). Crucially, none of the players in the starting line-up will face Osasuna at the weekend, and no one in la Liga will threaten to sue them.

Meanwhile, the folks at Sport have published an article entitled ‘Ferguson already has the eleven that will face the Barça in Rome’, and in it they reveal that Nani and Paul Scholes will be joined on the bench by Carlitos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov. Apparently, they will play with Cristiano Ronaldo up front on his own, much like he did in the semi-final at The Emirates.

Do you believe the Spanish press’ assertions, or should they leave the predictions to Mark Lawrenson and Nostradamus? Let us know your thoughts below…

The chances are you’ll come up with something better than us

It wasn’t until The Spoiler tried to figure out how we would set Liverpool up tonight that we realised just how tough a task Rafael Benitez faces. They need to field as attacking a line-up as possible without leaving themselves so vulnerable at the back that they risk humiliation. After lots of umming and ahhing, here’s what we settled on:

Playing without full-backs is risky with Florent Malouda and Salomon Kalou both likely to start for Chelsea so we’d need Jamie Carragher and Daniel Agger to move wide a lot with Javier Mascherano operating as a virtual centre-back at times. The reason we chose Sami Hyypia over Martin Skrtel is that he has scored in three previous Champions League quarter-finals for Liverpool and could unsettle a Chelsea defence missing John Terry at set-pieces.

Our approach is fairly suicidal so if you have a better way of balancing all-out attack with a steady defence, let us know with a comment below.

Like the last post, but the other way around innit

Liverpool’s preferred 4-2-3-1 formation has been scuppered by Macherano’s suspension. Therefore, rather than replacing him like-for-like with Lucas, we think Liverpool should bring in Benayoun, who has been brilliant recently, and switch to 4-4-2 with Kuyt up front.

Torres     Kuyt
Gerrard
Riera                                          Benayoun
Alonso
Aurelio    Carragher    Skrtel    Arbeloa
ReinaPlaying like this, The Spoiler believes Liverpool can take the game to Chelsea and try to finish them off in the home leg, something they failed to do last year. The drawback is that Yossi Benayoun is said to be struggling for fitness, butwe’re thinking this could be a scurrilous mind game.

Let us know who you would pick below…

L’pool/ Chelsea, UCL Quarter-final 1st leg, 7.45pm, Sky Sports 2

Liverpool and Chelsea will continue with their annual tradition of playing each other in the Champions League, and it’s a tight game to call. We think Hiddink will bring an attacking game to Anfield, but will probably start with one striker up front:

Drogba
Malouda                                  Anelka
Lampard    Essien
Mikel
Cole    Terry    Carvalho    Ivanovic
Cech

What do you think of our prediction? Should Ballack make the cut? Maybe they should field two up front? Let us know your preferred lineup below…