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It's Bananas: The Bournemouth Preview

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Liverpool are coming off a disappointing performance last week against Aston Villa, and Bournemouth look to capitalize as the Reds head south in the 4th round of the FA Cup.

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Michael Regan

US: Fox Sports 1 7:30AM EST

UK: ITV 1 12:30PM GMT

Liverpool look to bounce back from a disappointing result against Aston Villa in the league, but also look to avoid an upset as Bournemouth hope that the magic of the FA Cup is on their side as they take on Liverpool in a tough looking tie for the Reds.

Brad Jones says he's raring to go for the match, as the big boss revealed that he will start if fit. Brendan will seemingly look to rest Simon Mignolet who's been in shaky form of recent weeks, even with our mile long injury list.

Adding to the injury list is Lucas Leiva, who came off shortly after replacing Phillipe Coutinho against Villa, and Glen Johnson, who's apparently been suffering from an ankle problem for a few weeks, and will be out for an undetermined amount of time. Lucas tweeted that his injury is not as bad as first feared, despite the fact that Zaf and co. gave the prognosis of a possible six-to-eight week layoff.

Shifting our focus away from Liverpool, Saturdays' home side Bournemouth sit semi-comfortably in 16th place in the Championship table, six points above the drop zone, despite only picking up two wins in their last six in the league. However, Bournemouth are the home side, and we don't need to be reminded how difficult it was last year playing at Macclesfield, and then again at Oldham, eventually losing to the latter in an absolutely woeful performance.

With our injuries, it will be interesting to see what kind of team we put out. We have one wing back in the side that's 100% in Aly Cissokho, and then we have Martin Kelly on standby, who's not exactly fit himself. We also have Kolo Toure and Martin Skrtel in central defense, however, these two haven't boded well in recent weeks, giving up five goals in two games.

We only really have 3 fit midfielders in Raheem Sterling, Jordan Henderson, and Coutinho... Could it be time to give exciting youngster Jordon Ibe a go? Maybe even Jack Dunn, who's been one of the standout performers in the Academy for some time now. Even if we manage to start a decent looking XI, one would expect some of these players to be amongst the subs. It'd be nice to see some young players come in again, and Danny Ward even took a spot on the bench against Stoke. Maybe he could do the same on Saturday.

Some thoughts:

-I'd play a 4-3-3 with Kolo, Skrts, and Kelly and Cissokho in the back, Jack Dunn or Jordon Ibe with Henderson, Sterling and Cou in the middle, Alberto, Suarez, and Sturridge up front. You could also play Alberto on the wing in a 4-4-2... But whatever we do I wanna keep Victor Moses well and truly in the dog house. As bad as Cissokho has been, Moses is ten times worse.

-Please, can we stop leaking goals? It's like the defense don't have a clue what they're doing. We make the "smaller" teams look like Barcelona and Real Madrid instead of Stoke & Aston Villa, and I'm sick of it.