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Who should be on Liverpool's pre-match playlist? Email your thoughts to dan.lucas86@gmail.com or tweet them @DanLucas86
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19.30 2012. Rubbish movie. Year that happened three years - or, if you prefer, six games between these sides - ago. Also the last time Swansea beat Liverpool. The home side have been decent and well-managed but patchy this year - and indeed most years - but surely in-form Liverpool will win this one comfortably? There's no Gerrard and there's no Balotelli, but for my money Brendan Rodgers is better off without them.
19.20 So yeah, Liverpudlian music. Here's what Chris has to say:
Liverpool may have spent recent weeks closing the gap on Manchester United in pursuit of a Champions League position, but there is one area where the Merseysiders’ remain perplexingly behind – the pre-match entertainment.
While United – rather like neighbours City – celebrate their city’s musical heritage with an unapologetic Mancunian bias in the pre-match playlists, Liverpool seem to be increasingly ambivalent to what’s on their own doorstep, the 30 minutes before kick-off more likely to subdue rather than enhance the Anfield atmosphere.
Take a look at United’s track listings for Sunday’s game against Spurs, with its splattering of The Charlatans, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Courteeners, Joy Division and The Smiths – all finding a permanent place before every Old Trafford fixture to accompany blood stirring anthems from elsewhere.
Now, Mr. Bascombe has excellent music taste - his Twitter picture after all is a Teenage Fanclub album cover - but I'm not sure we can't do better than his playlist. I'm going to expand it to the whole of Merseyside and will allow for tenuous links, so Half Man, Half Biscuit and Elvis Costello are in. Today's riff though is going to be you lot and I building a full, comprehensive playlist for Liverpool FC. Then we'll hope they're reading. To start you off:
19.14 Evening folks. My colleague and expert in all things Merseyside, Chris Bascombe, has today filed a very entertaining piece on why Liverpool have fallen behind Manchester United in terms of success over the past couple of decades: it's the local music scene, you see. Why is it that the pre-match playlist at Old Trafford consists entirely of local musicians but no such pride is shown by their great rivals? More on that in a moment, because I've just spotted the teams are out! They are as follows:
Swansea: Fabianski, Naughton, Amat, Williams (capt), Taylor, Ki, Cork, Shelvey, Sigurdsson, Routledge, Gomis.
Subs: Tremmel, Rangel, Britton, Dyer, Emnes, Montero, Oliviera.
Liverpool: Mignolet, Can, Skrtel, Sakho, Allen, Henderson, Lallana, Moreno, Coutinho, Sterling, Sturridge.
Subs: Jones, Johnson, Toure, Lovren, Stevie G MBE, Lambert, Markovic.
Liverpool midfielder Joe Allen admits it took longer than they expected to turn their season around but he now has every confidence they can make it a success.
A dreadful start to the campaign saw them slip to 10th, seven points off the minimum requirement of a top-four place, in mid-December and exit the Champions League at the group stage.
Since then, however, they have taken 30 points from their 12 subsequent Premier League matches to put themselves firmly in the mix for a top-four place and have an FA Cup quarter-final replay against Championship side Blackburn to face next month.
"We always knew we'd turn it around but we wondered how long it was going to take. It did take longer than we expected, I think," said Wales midfielder Allen.
"Losing Luis Suarez in the summer (to Barcelona) and Daniel Sturridge being out (injured) for so long as well and the change we had, we always knew there'd be a little bit of a rocky patch but we didn't expect it to go on so long.
"We put expectation on ourselves because we think we're good enough to go on runs like this.
"With the players we've got, and the confidence we're playing with, I think it's a case of long may it continue."
Meanwhile, Swansea manager Garry Monk believes Jonjo Shelvey has shown the right response after criticising the player in public earlier this season.
Monk took the unusual step of singling out an individual for criticism in December when he told Shelvey to "wise up" and said that he would not tolerate his "laziness" any more.
But Shelvey, who has a reunion with former club Liverpool tonight, has flourished in a new-look Swansea City formation in recent weeks and was nominated for February's Premier League player-of-the-month award won by Tottenham striker Harry Kane.
"Jonjo's in good form and had a very good month, he's showing bits of what we know he can do and what we're pushing him to do," Monk said.
"You have to look at it as a response [to the criticism] because of his performance levels.
"He's done very well over the last month, but he contributed before that anyway.
"The performances were probably a bit more patchy then, but in the last month his game has been more complete.
"Hopefully he'll continue that and get better because there's a lot more to come from Jonjo.
"It's trying to get that out of him, it's about him maturing because he's still a young player and see what he can do going forward."
Join Dan Lucas from 7pm for all the build-up and live action...
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