Preview: Liverpool vs. Brentford
Liverpool play their first home game of the season against Brentford on Sunday.
LIVERPOOL VS. BRENTFORD
| Sunday, August 25th |
Premier League | Anfield
4:30PM GMT/11:30AM EST
An interesting statistic I’ve learned is that no manager has ever won their first two league games on the job since Graeme Souness back in 1991. Arne Slot saw his team beat the newly promoted Ipswich Town 2-0 on opening day. The Reds are now back home and they’ll be looking to keep the good times rolling as Slot makes his Anfield debut against Brentford.
Brentford also came away victorious in their first match, beating Crystal Palace 3-1.
While Liverpool have yet to bring any new players into the team, they have let a few go — two of them to Brentford. Fabio Carvalho will be interested in facing off against his former teammates, though he’ll likely start on the bench. Former Red Sepp van den Berg recently moved there, though the transfer will likely not be completed by Sunday.
In the early kick-off last Saturday, Liverpool were slow to begin. It took until the second half for them to flip into gear and start pressuring Ipswich and creating meaningful chances. Hopefully they’ve got that out of the way and are ready to perform from the first whistle on Sunday.
Slot also proved himself unafraid of making ruthless substitutions. He pulled off Jarell Quansah at halftime, citing his inability to win several duels as the reason. His in-game management might be interesting to watch moving forward.
Predicted Liverpool Lineup (4-2-3-1)
Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Konate, Van Dijk, Robertson; Mac Allister, Gravenberch; Salah, Szoboszlai, Diaz; Jota
Liverpool are doing well so far, in terms of early season injuries. The only player who is in doubt is Jarell Quansah, who got a knock in training. This means that Ibrahima Konaté will get his starting spot back next to Virgil van Dijk. Aside from Konaté, we expect Slot to put out the same team that won their opening match.
Brentford are having less luck, with Rico Henry, Igor Thiago, Josh Dasilva and Aaron Hickey all currently unavailable.
What the Managers Had to Say
Arne Slot: “You can see that their manager is there for a long time already. In the last game against Crystal Palace they could play a 4-4-2 and could play a 5-3-2, so they can change systems within a game and I think that’s highly impossible if you work with a group for three, four or five weeks – maybe even after a year it’s still not possible because it’s so difficult to bring the best out of them in one system. So, if you can play two systems with them, you have to make the conclusion that Thomas Frank is doing a real good job over there for a lot of years already.”
Thomas Frank: “We are going into a fantastic team, against a good manager. I followed his work with Feyenoord, of course seen his pre-season games, the Ipswich game and it looks good. He tried to add layers to the fantastic job [Jurgen] Klopp did. He inherited a fantastic team. The team that started against Ipswich is a fantastic team.”
The Officials
Referee: Stuart Attwell. Assistants: Simon Bennett, Dan Robathan. Fourth official: Michael Salisbury. VAR: Michael Oliver. Assistant VAR: Mat Wilkes.
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