Well, thankfully, the international break is over, and it’s a return to the Premiership for our club players. We lie second in the table, to Newcastle’s 11th. Luckily no more injuries were picked up by our players during the international break and our injury list actually shrinks ahead of this game with Glen Johnson, Aly Cissokho and Joe Allen all returning to the squad after lengthy absences. Bad news as Iago Aspas is ruled out with a thigh problem. Philippe Coutinho is still in recovery from his shoulder injury. Lucas Leiva though will be back available for selection after completing his suspension.
Newcastle have a few notable absences of their own, with two key Argentinians missing. Fabricio Coloccini and Jonas Gutiérrez are both out, defender Coloccini has a groin injury and midfielder Gutiérrez has been allowed to return to his homeland for personal reasons.
Newcastle will still be smarting from the heavy 6-0 defeat Liverpool inflicted on them, last time out, in April. If anything, our team has grown even stronger than then, so Alan Pardew may indeed come under heavy pressure. The Liverpool SAS (Suarez and Sturridge) are probably the League’s most prolific striking partnership and with key personnel missing, Newcastle will hopefully be on the back foot.
With the return of Johnson to Liverpool’s squad, it could be interesting predicting what Brendan Rodgers decides to do with the defence. The 3-5-2 we’ve been using recently, although I’ve been quite critical of it, does seem to have been delivering results and therefore works. Will Johnson’s reappearance mean we revert back to a standard 4-4-2?
These games have traditionally been goal feasts with 122 games being scored in the past 38 league meetings. Let’s hope that it’s one way traffic and that our defence will be tight, with our attack performing to its utmost.Newcastle have had an unbalanced start to their campaign and their defence has been notably leaky. With key players missing today, including their captain, the omens for the passionate St. James Park home supporters aren’t good. Brendan Rodgers has described his squad as being at the strongest yet this season, so looking at the pre-match analysis, everything is in our favour and with luck we should gain the three points here, temporarily catapulting us back to the top of the League.
The match will be shown live on BT Sports, kicking off at 12.45pm