Stoke to plunge Liverpool’s top four hopes into turmoil with cagey win

The eye-popping brilliance of Luis Suarez has rather papered over the fact that Liverpool aren’t that great on the road and, as their title charge begins to run out of gas, they must travel to a ground where they hold a particularly dreadful record.

The Britannia is the venue where a wheel will fall off the slow-moving Reds bandwagon, a venue that the Merseysiders haven’t ever celebrated a Premier League victory at.

This stat alone makes monstrously priced Stoke well-worth a punt at 4/1, while the 4/6 favouritism attributed to Brendan Rodgers’ men is only for the fearless to mess around with.

Norwich are the only side to claim league spoils at the home of Mark Hughes’ men this season, some seven games back.

This stern record does little to ease the Reds’ jitters, which are justified given they’ve returned home pointless from each of their last three league visits here, drawing the other two to make their five meetings since the top flight’s re-branding winless ones.

Their current run on the road isn’t exactly of the inspiring ilk that suggests the Britannia hoodoo is about to be heaved. Liverpool’s only win in seven was the 5-0 thumping of a hapless Tottenham side, something of an anomaly when you consider that they’ve lost the two games that followed, as well as the match that preceded it.

One thing that’s been constant in this campaign of unpredictability is Stoke’s inability to bang the goals in. A total of seven games from nine at home have erred on the side of under 2.5 goals, the same of which can be said of four of Liverpool’s five Premier League jaunts to Staffordshire.

While their unimpressive away form has resulted in a patch of goal-filled games, it might be best to get behind another bout of unders here, with those backing fewer than 2.5 goals paid out at a very generous 1/1.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date

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