Rob Edwards underlines importance of FA Cup clash vs Liverpool amid relegation fight

The Wolverhampton Wanderers head coach explained why he feels Friday's FA Cup meeting is the priority over the Premier League meeting with Liverpool three days ago

Rob Edwards said the FA Cup tie against Liverpool is the club's most important game of the season(Image: Getty Images)

Rob Edwards has claimed Wolverhampton Wanderers' FA Cup tie against Liverpool is his side’s “most important game of the season”.

Wolves' fate in the Premier League looks all but sealed, despite its revival under Edwards, with the club taking seven points from recent games against Arsenal, Aston Villa and Liverpool.

A 2-1 win over the champions on Tuesday underlined the extent of Wolves’ improvement, with Andre netting an injury-time winner at Molineux. That moved the Midlands club up to 16 points with eight games remaining. Even if it were to win all of its remaining games, that would leave Wolves on 40 points, a tally that may prove insufficient to secure safety in this competitive Premier League season.

Therefore, the cup has obviously become Edwards’ priority. Memorably, Wigan Athletic won the FA Cup in 2013 but could not avoid relegation to the Championship, and that remains the only instance of such an occurrence.

Wolves is looking to change that, and with renewed belief at Molineux, the most unlikely of cup heroics seems much more plausible.

Reflecting on Tuesday’s league win, Edwards said: “We made some changes, but that was because of knowing what was coming up, but also we felt it was the right way to try and win the game on Tuesday night.

Edwards has transformed Wolves' season(Image: PA)

“We did that for both those reasons and it’s hard for me to prioritise either game. We’re really valuing this game tomorrow and this game tomorrow is now the most important game of our season, but Tuesday night was the most important game of our season at that moment.

“It was really difficult for me to not value a game against Liverpool in the Premier League, so it was about trying to pick the right team to win a game of football, and knowing that we’ve got to be really good.

“We might have to ride our luck a little bit, and maybe things go our way for what happened to happen and now we’re in a good spot now, apart from Andre suspended, where everyone’s fit and available for tomorrow night.”

Andre scored the late, decisive goal on Tuesday

Edwards will likely make a few alterations from midweek and said he expects a different approach from Liverpool.

“It’s the same team, but we will redo it because we always go through it,” said the former Luton Town boss.

“Reflecting and watching the game back and what we’ve been able to say with the boys, they [Liverpool] are a brilliant team and they’ve got great players. They might make one or two changes, but I don’t anticipate loads of change tactically, because it could still cause us problems what they do.

“But I think they’ll look to try and do things better and quicker, and we’ve got to be ready for that.”