Gary Dicker and his Carlisle team mates may have further added to the pressure on Brendan Rodgers on Wednesday night but the Dubliner is hoping that the Liverpool boss is allowed the opportunity to turn things around at Anfield.
The 29 year-old is a long time Liverpool fan whose previous Anfield highlights were limited to the likes of watching the team play Celtic in Europe from the Kop. He topped that by quite some distance in the League Cup game on Wednesday with a strong personal showing as Carlisle took the Premier League outfit all the way to a penalty shoot-out in which Dicker coolly converted his own spot kick.
Liverpool narrowly survived the scare but the trouble they had disposing of the League Two outfit has left Rodgers under more pressure from fans and the media, something Dicker says he regrets.
“Look, football’s about winning and knowing that they had had a shaky start (in the league) and were under a bit of pressure was good from our point of view beforehand,” says the former UCD midfielder who, having got tickets for his wife Leonie and her family found himself scrambling about for more in advance of the game after his brother Chris announced at the last minute that he, their mother and other Dublin based relative were travelling over to see the game.
“We knew all the pressure was on them. For us it was a sort bonus game but then you’re not going in to roll over either. Afterwards, we were disappointed but awful proud as well. It was probably the strongest team they could have put out. Okay, Henderson and Benteke were injured but he brought on Coutinho pretty early on so to take them that far... Not to win then is a disappointment but if you’d said we’d manage that much before the game we’d all have taken it there and then.
“From a personal point of view it was the sort of stuff that dreams are made of,” he continues; “to play at Anfield and to score in a shoot out. I’d missed the two games against them when I was with Brighton through injury and so from the time we pulled them out of the hat for this I was just praying I’d play. But it was a personal thing rather a career highlight as such....being in a successful team is more important really from that point of view.
“We have Newport on Saturday and if we watch that game back we’ll probably learn more than by watching this one but if we could take some of this performance into the league then we could really kick on,” he says. “Obviously it’s an easy game to be up for. Coming out to ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was frightening to be honest; if that doesn’t get you going then there isn’t much in life that will but they’re still quality players and we went toe to toe with them.
“We didn’t just go there looking to sit in for the whole game and hope for something. And the goal we scored, it showed that we cut them open. It wasn’t a fluke, or a scramble on the box. We cut them open well and scored.
“Other than their goal, they didn’t really hurt us an awful lot. They had a lot of shots. But they had lads shooting from 25 or 30 yards every time there was a chance and we had a good 40 per cent of the possession as well so we weren’t panicking, we were trying to pass it as well.
“We knew they were going to have most of the ball but we really didn’t feel too uncomfortable when they had it. We weren’t hugely stretched, we weren’t dragged here or there, pulled all over the place. We kept our shape and we broke when we had the chance and we were well worth taking them to penalties really.”
The Dubliner was determined, he says, to take one of the spot kicks. “I was straight up to the gaffer, I said: “I want one.....I’ll take the first, the last.....I’m not walking out of Anfield without having taken one.” He got his wish and was one of only two Carlisle players to find the back of the net. “Walking up to it was something else but it’s really just about keeping your head really and luckily I did that.”
Dicker’s assessment of relative ease with which United got through the game is damning enough stuff for Rodgers but the midfielder who left Belfield for Stockport in 2007, still thinks the northerner is the right man for the job.
“Football’s a crazy game,” he says. “You can go from being the best manager in the world to the worst person almost overnight. But I hope he gets to stay and turn things around. I think he’s the right man for the job but it’s been difficult for him. He’s had to see a couple of the team’s best players and lads of that quality are hard to replace.”
