Yesterday I just felt different. Before the match, I promised myself to stay at home, watch the reds on my own for a change. A bit like promising your bird to go out together, just you and her without joining up with your other mates. On an ordinary night though, rather than on the awaited Saturday night. I have treated League Cup matches like that in the past, and it makes a bit for a change. Facing Tottenham in their own White Hart Lane at this time, is probably the most impractical of times, but I thought, believed or hoped that such adversity in the situation will get the best out of the side that Benitez will opt for this secondary competition. It might be hypocritical for me to call the League Cup secondary, as I remember being over the moon, seeing the reds beating Birmingham to win the same cup seven years ago. Equally made up when Gerard Houllier did it for the second time in 2004, this time over the Mancs. And equally gutted when in Benitez’s first cup final, Chelsea overturned Riise’s scorching opener and Nunez’s goal was too late to salvage the game. Still, if the league is our bread and butter, this is surely our porridge. Still contrary to when Liverpool won it four successive times, at a time when the bread and butter was being put on the table with the same consistency of a family who owned a bakery, our guts nowadays seems not prepared to take more than one plate each dinner.

Some might argue that yesterday exposed the real lack of depth in the squad. One valid point there, but what really irked me yesterday, was players that Liverpool have paid relatively big money for them looking rather inept. Andrei Dossena looked as much of an Italian defender as much as a Camorrista is likely to be found appreciative of justice and the common good. Lucas Leiva, who admittedly has looked the part more than once when asked to deputize in the Liverpool midfielder, looked as Brazilian as an Argentinean dancing out of tune the Samba. Sami Hyypia who’s been there for ten years, doing it all before and with nothing to prove was the most respectable performer and put them to shame. The difference was palpable. These are lads who are yet to win anything, and still on a night like yesterday were like rabbits in the headlights when they should have been grabbing all the limelight of the same headlights.

I just can’t wait for Saturday. Back to the league. Back to normality.