The whole 'would you rather' stuff usually drives me nuts but I have been thinking about it quite a lot since Saturday. I'm sort of viewing every league game as cup final-y as you usually do at this stage when in a title race. I know it sounds a bit stupid because it obviously isn't the case but for me if we don't win tonight we don't win the league. We
can drop points in it and win the league but I just think the chances of us drawing to Luton twice in a season and still winning it is a bit
out there. We'll have to contend with injury woes for the rest of the season I imagine and this is just about the kindest game you could ask for right now. Failure to win would have Brentford looking like a pyrrhic victory but if we do get three points and can subsequently beat Forest and then City then I'll start getting really excited about the league. I'd say for the time being though I'm sceptical about winning it in general given our problems/City's quality. Every result from now until the end of the season will feel like something of a chain. Fail tonight and it'll certainly feel broken even with time to go.
Then it's the actual cup final, another (obvious!) must win. The world won't end if we don't win as evidenced by losing plenty in the past, but silverware is always a requirement at the club and to secure some with three months of the season left would be huge. I'm amazed by how many are evidencing a no big deal attitude towards it. In near enough every season we've ever even made the final of the league cup we've gone on to play at least one more final the same season (two more in each 2001 and 2022) which obviously bodes well.
In general, I think the priority goes League/Europe/Cups but am glad Klopp seems to go with a next game only approach. I've got one of those horrible 'what if?' thoughts in my mind wherein the next week we've lost what should really be one of our routine league wins against Luton, lost a cup final and then exited the FA Cup. All of a sudden going into March things would be on a massive downer. Personally, I'd have Europe down as being just as important as the league in the sense you have to go strong as possible in both in my eyes. I could understand failure in the domestic cups but if we go out of Europe in March or April and don't have a league title to celebrate at the end of the season it'll obviously go down as a disappointment unless we can in the process bag the League Cup/FA Cup as we did two years ago.
So what game would I rather win ... don't know
. You know what the best thing is? It isn't hypothetical, we can win both and it wouldn't be particularly surprising if we did. All I ask is we play against Luton and Chelsea with everything we have, making sure we don't break that chain in the league and secure silverware in the process. Southampton is obviously the designated rotation game you'd think but from thereon in I think we pretty much have to go as strong as possible in everything else to make it a successful season.