Rodgers hoping to get his tactics right vs. Pochettino on Saturday (ESPN article)

by Dave Usher for ESPN

Liverpool travel to the South Coast this Saturday to take on Southampton in a fixture that has been circled in my calendar for weeks.

While players and managers rightly speak of taking each game as it comes, for supporters it's entirely different; we will studiously go through the upcoming fixture list, trying to determine how many points our team will pick up from each game and where that may eventually take us to in the table.

When the Reds fired themselves into the title race by blitzing Everton and Arsenal at Anfield, a look through the upcoming fixtures gave plenty of cause for encouragement. Games against Fulham and Swansea would surely yield maximum points (they did, but only just!), while a trip Cardiff and a home game with Sunderland shouldn't -- in theory at least -- prove too taxing. The Southampton game, on the other hand, is a lot more difficult to call, and that's why it really jumped out at me as perhaps the pivotal fixture in this run of games. It has the potential to go horribly wrong but, equally, it would be a real boost to Liverpool's title hopes if they could emerge from it with maximum points.

Of course there's a trip to Old Trafford on the horizon, too -- that's never the happiest of hunting grounds for Liverpool -- but strangely that concerns me less than the Southampton game for a variety of reasons, not least because of the respective opposition managers. The day I find myself fearing David Moyes is the day I should really jack it all in. He'll be more nervous about that fixture than anybody, and hopefully that will translate through to his players on the day.

Back to the Saints. On the surface, this isn't the most difficult of games; Southampton are ninth in the Premier League and their home record, although decent enough, is not exactly intimidating as they have been held to five draws and suffered three defeats. My concern is that Southampton are very much an up-and-down team, and if you catch them when they are "up," they are a real handful as they've got some excellent players. I'm a big Adam Lallana fan, Jay Rodriguez is a very good player and if it were in any way possible, I'd love to see Luke Shaw as Liverpool's left back for the next decade or so. It's not just those three, either; scouser Rickie Lambert is a big threat and Morgan Schneiderlin is a fine player, too. They're a very good side on their day.

Furthermore, Mauricio Pochettino has locked horns with Brendan Rodgers twice since coming to England and, tactically speaking, he's schooled the Reds' boss on both occasions. There's an element of the unknown about this fixture, and it's a big test -- but also a big opportunity -- for Liverpool.

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