ON the face of it the players and management of Liverpool should sleep soundly and contentedly upon their beds of Norwegian wood tonight.
As Bill Shankly once famously remarked, fear is a compelling excuse invented by the fainthearted, and as anyone who knows anything about football will tell you, Liverpool have nothing to fear this evening. Really?
It is quite probably the fact that so many have told him - often and with conviction - that his team will comfortably defeat SK Brann Bergen en route to the semi-finals of this season's European Cup Winners' Cup which has so disturbed the Liverpool manager Roy Evans.
A naturally cautious man who has based an entire career on not tempting fate, Evans is possibly more wary of the enemy within - ill-founded over-confidence - than he is of efficient, if unspectacular, opponents. Quite understandably, when seeking to ridicule the soft-touch theory Evans points out that Bergen eliminated PSV Eindhoven in the previous round. Another of their victims, of course, in the preliminary round, was Shelbourne.
"They know what they are about," he says with the look of one who is desperate to be believed.
They do, indeed, but, even so, if Liverpool should fail to make further progress in pursuit of the one European trophy to have so far eluded them, they will stand accused of having looked a gift horse in the mouth.
It could have been worse. In fact, it could not actually have been any better, for the other clubs still involved are Barcelona, Fiorentina, Benfica, Paris St Germain, AIK Stockholm and AEK Athens.
Last season Liverpool were dumped out of the UEFA Cup by another unheralded Scandinavian club, Denmark's Brondby. To a man, Bergen believe themselves to be capable of a similar feat.
It is either a curious case of misplaced optimism or a portent Liverpool would be well advised to heed.
"Liverpool are a very good team, the best in England, but we do not feel under any pressure," says the Bergen coach Kjell Tennfjord.
"We know all about them, so they will not be able to surprise us at all. Eindhoven were also a good side but we knew we would beat them. If we are going to overcome Liverpool, it is probably a good idea to score some goals here in Norway," he added.
Doing precisely that became slightly more of a possibility yesterday when the Liverpool party departed Speke airport without Mark Wright, the pivotal figure in a defence which, in recent weeks, has tended to shudder with collective apprehension when subjected to switches in personnel.
With Wright unable to shake off a groin strain suffered during the morale-sapping defeat at Aston Villa on Sunday, and Norwegian full-back Bjorn Kvarme ineligible, Evans will reluctantly be forced into change. Neil Ruddock and Phil Babb are expected to return, making room on the substitutes' bench at the compact Brann Stadium for Stan Collymore, who seems likely to be replaced by the more energetic, more workmanlike, Patrik Berger.
Bergen's aspirations have been diluted by the loss of two key players, not to injury or to suspension but to an administrative cock-up which has precipitated the resignation of the club's chief executive. After allowing Icelandic international goalkeeper Birkir Kristinsson and midfielder Jan Ove Pedersen to leave on loan when the Norwegian season ended back in November, Bergen forgot to re-register them upon their return.
