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17th Jan 2017

Ahead of Liverpool replay, Plymouth boss takes swipe at Jose Mourinho’s tactics

Taking a page out of Mourinho's playbook.

Darragh Murphy

Plymouth now know how to score against Liverpool.

A week after the League Two outfit held the Reds to a 0-0 draw at Anfield, Plymouth manager Derek Adams believed he saw precisely how to break the Merseyside side down.

Ahead of the FA Cup third round replay this week, Adams has jokingly revealed his gameplan for the second crack at Jurgen Klopp’s team and it’s a slight dig at Manchester United’s long-ball tactics that were employed towards the end of Sunday’s 1-1 Premier League draw.

“We’re going to sign (Manchester United’s Marouane) Fellaini and hit it long,” Adams said when asked how he plans to upset the Premier League opposition.

Much has been made of the direct strategy that United boss Jose Mourinho resorted to in the dying moments of the weekend’s clash as he instructed his players to sail the ball into the direction of Fellaini’s head so that he could nod it into the path of supporting teammates.

The tactics led to harsh criticism from Klopp but, jokes aside, Plymouth are well aware that they will need a similar discipline on Wednesday evening to the mentality shown last week, when the lower-league team remained resolute in the face of the youngest ever Liverpool starting XI.

“We have to defend very well again,” Adams told BBC Radio Devon.

“I think that we’ve shown in the first game that we can do that, and we’ll have to do exactly the same.

“I can’t see that we’re going to be too cavalier on our approach. We’ve got to show respect to the Premier League team.

“They’re third in the top flight and we’ve got to be careful of that.”