Liverpool Vs Leicester City
Sunday 22nd November - 19:15 Kick Off
Sky SportsTeam news:
Liverpool Milner, Origi and Adrian are fit.
Leicester Pereira, Soyuncu, Ndidi and Castagne are out
Referee: Chris Kavanagh.
Assistants: Daniel Cook, Marc Perry.
Fourth official: Paul Tierney.
VAR: David Coote (yes....really).
Assistant VAR: Nick Hopton.
Once again we go into a game against Leicester City with both teams near the top of the table. The equivalent game last season was a 2-1 massacre with a late Milner penalty. I’m pretty sure we’d all take that again right now. We’ve made, in my opinion, an excellent start to the season. The football is getting better and we’ve had it tough on paper fixture wise, not taking into account the injury issues. Third in the table plus 3/3 in the CL is great going. Leicester obviously are top. I don’t actually think they’ve played particularly greatly so far but they do seem more ‘pragmatic’ than they maybe did last season under Rodgers. It’ll be a tough game, they always are with Steptoe up top.
So genuinely...injuries. Van Dijk, Gomez, TAA and Ox are definitely out. Fabinho, Thiago, Henderson and Robbo we really don’t know. Mo may or may not be out with COVID. And we’ve another week of internationals to go. If we could line up with 11 players in their right position it’d be an absolute triumph. If there was ever a demonstration of the fucking disgraceful schedule these players are facing unfortunately we’re the best example right now. It seems doubtful there’ll be any point this season we’ll have been able to field out strongest side and we’re only 8 games in.
Leicester in all honesty are having some bad injury problem themselves. Soyuncu, Ndidi, Castagne and Pereira are definitely out. Fofana and Schmeichel could be doubtful after knocks on international duty. That’s the majority of the defensive line up, if the latter two are out it’s the whole lot. We’re probably looking at this game praying they’ve got two CMs other than Choudhury because he’s pretty much guaranteed to add another one to the set if he gets on. Both teams are going to be pretty dilapidated at this point, especially after an international break.
Their main threat is going to be Vardy, let’s be honest. He’s started the season as well as ever with 9 goals in 8 games so far. We’ll be hoping that we can at least field Fabinho and Matip for this, I wouldn’t fancy one of the kids up against such a rotter. He looks like he’s striking up a good partnership with Under and they have Maddison back in the team creating goals. They’re a dangerous team and they’ve seemingly recovered really well from their aberration at the end of last season, where they gifted United/Chelsea third and fourth place.
The most important thing right now though is that we sadly lost one of our greatest ever recently. Taken far too early, hopefully we can put in a performance to give him a smile up there.
Rest In Peace Ray