Dominik Szoboszlai

It’s hard to see how this will be a low scoring game with all of the background noise affecting Manchester City following on from the announcement that City have been found guilty of nearly all of the 115 charges put to them three years ago.

Ironically, City now travel to face the side who suffered more as a result of City’s cheating more than any other side in the Premier League. Liverpool will be eager to welcome them too, having only lost one of the last six meetings between the teams at Anfield - with half of these games seeing 3+ goals.

Liverpool have seen 3+ goals in three of their four games at Anfield this season, with the exception of a 0-0 draw against Fulham that saw both sides combine to produce an xG of 1.98 as well as 42 touches in the box.

Liverpool are set to be without Jeremy Jacquet for this clash which is a big miss to a back line that already looked pretty vulnerable. I think City will be able to score here, and Liverpool should have all the motivation they need to contribute to this tally as well.

Unsurprisingly, Erling Haaland has had more shots on target than any other player in the Premier League across the opening five games of the season.

I thought that he may have some slight issues in adapting to Maresca’s style of play, but that hasn’t been the case with the striker looking even better than he did last season having scored five goals across his five starts from 10 shots on target (2.0 per 90).

Haaland enjoyed a strong international break too, scoring three goals across his four games for Norway from 18 shots (4.81 per 90), seeing half of those efforts find the target (2.40 per 90).

Haaland has scored in each of his last three appearances against Liverpool, netting a hat trick when the sides last met in the FA Cup earlier this year. He had 2+ SOT in all three of those games, actually finding the target on three occasions in two of those assignments.

Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo are real doubts for this game having picked up injuries during the international break, setting the stage for Bradley Barcola to make his first real impact in a Liverpool shirt.

Barcola has everything to be a top winger, he’s really quick and regularly gets into promising positions. His issue over the last few seasons has been converting these opportunities, his final product has been a bit lacking even in his early few weeks at Liverpool - but he’s still been getting into decent positions to take aim.

He started both games against Belgium for France over the international break, having 2+ shots in both games and also finding the target in both matches. He also had an effort on target against Bournemouth just before the international break, and notably averaged 1.59 shots on target per 90 for PSG in Ligue 1 last season. 

There aren’t many players who will be as fired up as Dominik Szoboszlai for this game, who has been moved to a slightly deeper role by Andoni Iraola as he tries to find the best balance for his midfield.

Szoboszlai has committed 10 fouls across his five starts in the Premier League already this season (2.04 per 90). This is a substantial increase on his foul numbers from last season (1.14 per 90), with Liverpool generally playing with more intensity under Iraola as they attempt to understand his style of play.

Szoboszlai will be directly up against a trio of Cherki, Anderson and Fernandez who have all shown promise when it comes to winning fouls this season - Anderson and Fernandez are the two shortest players in the market with most bookmakers to be fouled here, giving Szoboszlai the perfect direct opponents to commit at least one foul.