Liverpool secured a trip to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup fifth-round on Wednesday night but they left it late, with two goals in the closing minutes after Bolton Wanderers of the Championship appeared to be heading into the last-16. Raheem Sterling’s 86th-minute effort cancelled out Eidur Gudjohnsen’s second-half penalty before Philippe Coutinho unleashed a spectacular superb curling winner in added time that moved Brendan Rodgers to compare the Brazilian to a prolific former club-mate, Luis Suárez.
The Liverpool manager said of Coutinho, who on Tuesday signed an extension that keeps him at Liverpool until 2020: “You would just pay money to watch that kid. He will become world class in the next couple of years. Luis Suárez was at a level, then he played in this team and grew and grew with the model – and went into the world-class bracket. I can see Coutinho falling in the same sort of way. He might not be as prolific as Suárez was but he is certainly on the way to that at Liverpool. He is a wonderful player. Signing a new deal shows he is really committed to Liverpool and his development.”
A return to Selhurst Park in the next round may appear daunting for Rodgers’s side, who lost there 3-1 in November, but the Northern Irishman believes Liverpool, who have been defeated only once in 13 outings, will arrive at Palace for the tie in a different frame of mind. “It is a great thing [to go there],” he said. “We didn’t play anywhere near the level [in November] but that was the lowest moment of the season in terms of performance levels. We go back there in a different frame of mind and with big confidence.
“We’ve got a great habit at the minute, which is winning games. You can’t question the character. They have shown a real strong mentality in my time here. We needed to arrest the momentum which was going the other way after the Palace game. We did that with seven points out of nine.”
On the day when Louis van Gaal was charged by the FA for implying bias from officials during Manchester United’s FA Cup tie at Cambridge United, comments from the Bolton manager Neil Lennon about the performance of the referee, Roger East, who sent off Neil Danns in the 66th minute, may be examined by the governing body.
“I thought he was rubbish,” said Lennon. “The first booking Dannsy gets isn’t a booking. He doesn’t make contact. I thought there were things that went on in the game that went Liverpool’s way.”
