Referee: Michael Oliver
Assistants: Stuart Burt, Dan Cook
Fourth official: Anthony Taylor
VAR: John Brooks
Assistant VAR: Simon Long
There's not a lot to say about this fixture that hasn't been written previously. However I'm not sure there's been a point in the last 30-35 years where we've had this much of an advantage in terms of squad strength and overall standing of the clubs. That doesn't mean we can expect an easy game, despite some of our recent results against them and our clearly superior playing squad, you always have to be ready to battle to win this one.
That's what we've done recently against them though, we've won the battle early, we've scored early and taken away any spirit they may have had. If we can repeat that this Sunday we've got a very good chance of another enjoyable scoreline. If we allow them to get into their gameplan though and don't win that battle this could turn into the type of game we saw against Fulham.
Something that is slightly new - this will be our biggest attendance since a game with Leicester City in 1973 with around 57,000 expected as the new Anfield Upper stand opens for the first time. Looking forward to seeing the extra noise we can generate.
The teams are hard to predict due to injuries on both sides. However at the moment they seem in worse shape than us, due to our strength in depth. Matip's out for the season it seems which is a massive shame, Mac Allister sounds unlikely for this with a strange injury involving the stud slicing through to the knee bone!? We've other long term issues leaving us without Robertson, Thiago, Bajcetic & Jota (although it sounds like he may not be far off). That still leaves us with the ability to field a strong team.
I'm not sure what a strong team is for them. Bruno Fernandes their captain is suspended, didn't fancy it it seems. Their injury list possibly includes Rashford, Martial, Shaw & Maguire. Lindelof, Mount & Eriksen are other possibles. Casemiro & Martinez are definitely out. There may be others, as I've seen headlines about up to 13 missing.
I don't know how much the fact we have 3 games in 6 days will play in the line up. Two big games follow quickly afterwards, we'll need to be strong in all of them. Though you would expect if any of the line ups were to be slightly weaker it would be vs West Ham.
One thing that we will have to improve is our overall level across 90 mins. It's hard to complain about much given we're top, but we've gained a lot of points from losing positions and it's hard to keep up that kind of resilience.
We are going to need to start playing better to win the games we have ahead of us, in ways that don't expend as much energy or can be managed if we build a lead early.
We definitely have the potential to play much better, we've already shown that at times. But we are still in our infancy as a team, meaning we're also vulnerable and inconsistent at times, and we don't look as tight and defensively sound as we should.
Strange results can happen when a team is still learning. So, although on paper I certainly fancy us for 3 wins - thats a lot easier said than done.
But for now we focus on United, and while a strange result is possible if we don’t apply ourselves correctly, I think we play our strongest available team and we’ll prove too good for them by 2-0 or 3-0.
