After turning down moves to Sunderland and Queens Park Rangers during the summer of 2014, former Liverpool man Fabio Borini endured a torrid spell at Anfield last season during which he was largely frozen out of the team by then Reds boss Brendan Rodgers. With it painfully obvious that he had no future on Merseyside, the 24-year old moved to the Stadium of Light at his first opportunity and has made no secret of his desire to extract a measure of revenge when the two sides meet on Wednesday.
“Obviously, the goals give you a little bit of confidence, but at the end of the day, all that matters is the result,” said the Italian after bagging a consolation goal in each of the Black Cats last two outings. “Yes, I’d like to score against Liverpool. More than anyone else. I’ve said everything I want to already about my time there. But these games are both huge for us,” explained the Sunderland man. “We have a points target for the next few games and that’s what we’re obviously trying to achieve.”
Without a single point in their last four league outings, Sunderland will do well to snap that losing streak when the Reds come knocking later in the week. Coming off back to back thrashings at the hands of Chelsea and Manchester City, they face a Liverpool side who only just snapped a winless streak of their own by shutting out Premier League pacesetters Leicester City on Boxing Day — the first team to blank the Foxes this season.
While the Anfield outfit have endured a mixed bag of results since the start of the campaign, Sunderland have been consistently wretched, bagging only three-wins in 18-outings thus far and are firmly mired in yet another scrap to stay in the top-flight. With that in mind, maybe Borini should focus less on talking smack about a side that gave him every opportunity to succeed and more on how he’s going to finagle a move out of the Championship next season.
