The world’s best keeper (arguably) talks to Will Unwin (definitely)
[Arne Slot] is a nice person, a family man with a lot of conviction in his ideas of what he wants from the players and the team and what he wants to achieve. His goals are for greatness, great things at the club. The same as mine. So it was a good conversation.
Plenty going on in the early games. Anthony Gordon has just equalised for Newcastle at Bournemouth, and Noni Madueke has scored a second-half hat-trick to put Chelsea 5-2 up at Wolves.
Arne Slot continues the systematic destruction of Jarell Quansah’s self-confidence by replacing him with Ibrahima Konate. That’s the only change from the team that started at Ipswich last week.
Brentford almost make one change: Keane Lewis-Potter in, Kevin Schade out. That almost certainly means a switch to a back five. The two new signings from Liverpool, Fabio Carvalho and Sepp van den Berg, are on the bench.
Liverpool (4-2-3-1) Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Konate, van Dijk, Robertson; Gravenberch, Mac Allister, Salah, Szoboszlai, Diaz; Jota.
Substitutes: Kelleher, Endo, Gomez, Nunez, Gakpo, Elliott, Tsimikas, Quansah, Bradley.
Brentford (5-3-2) Flekken; Roerslev, Collins, Pinnock, Ajer, Lewis-Potter; Norgaard, Janelt, Jensen; Mbeumo, Wissa.
Substitutes: Valdimarsson, van den Berg, Schade, Carvalho, Onyeka, Mee, Yarmolyuk, Damsgaard, Trevitt.
Referee Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire)
Arne Slot, welcome to Anfield. The status of Liverpool manager is such that a home debut counts as a major event, one that has happened only five times this century If you include caretakers, which is exactly what we’re going to do as it supports the half-arsed narrative we’re peddling, Chelsea have had as many in last two years.
It surely won’t always be this way, but the transition between Jurgen Klopp and Slot has been very smooth. Even though Liverpool didn’t get Martin Zubimendi, they look in decent shape and started the season with an ultimately emphatic 2-0 win at Ipswich.
Their opponents today are the great regenerators: Brentford. They don’t change manager too often but their team continues to evolve, and last week they beat Crystal Palace 2-1 without Ivan Toney, who was left out because of the distraction of that bloody open window. He’s absent again today; we’ll have the rest of the team news shortly.
Kick off 4.30pm.