Liverpool vs Aston Villa: Big Bet Preview
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Liverpool vs Aston Villa
(Sat 1 Nov, 8:00pm UK - Sky Sports)
Liverpool fans will be wishing the clocks had gone back 6 weeks last weekend as they take a look down the table they were comfortably top of and find themselves below Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United.
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A month is an incredibly long time in football and no two sides are making that more evident at the moment than those in this week’s Big Bet - Liverpool and Aston Villa.
On the 1st of October, Liverpool were sat two points clear atop the tree after Crystal Palace had just ended their otherwise perfect start to the season. Villa, on the other hand, had just won their first league game of the season to climb out of the relegation zone by two points into 16th. Fast forward to this weekend’s game and both sides are level on points, the champions ahead of Villa by just one goal difference. What a difference a month makes.
Form
I mean, where do we start? Liverpool have lost their last four games in the Premier League, equalling their total for the entirety of last season already, whereas Villa are on a run of four straight league wins including particularly impressive victories over Spurs and Manchester City.
The form table couldn’t look any more different for these sides, but something about Liverpool’s squad makes you disregard what your eyes are seeing and presume that this week will be the one it all turns back around. They bolstered their runaway title winning team with £400m of additions in the summer across the whole pitch, breaking the British transfer record twice in the process. They must be good, surely? The injury to Alisson is a big loss for the club, he had arguably been their player of the season before he took a knock and it’s clear that their backline could do with the reassurance of the Brazilian behind them as they try and find the right balance of full-backs that works with their new additions. You’d back Liverpool to turn it around eventually, but wether it will be against a high-flying Aston Villa will remain to be seen. If Arne Slot had hair, he’d be tearing it out watching his side play in recent weeks.
One man whose notoriously luscious locks will stay firmly planted in his head is Villa boss Unai Emery. The Spaniard recently celebrated three years in charge of the club, and it would be difficult to argue he isn’t already going down as a club legend. They started shakily, but he has stuck by his players and his system and instilled the belief in them that they can get back to winning ways. The only recent blip in their form was an away loss at Go Ahead Eagles in the Europa League, a bizarre result that was quickly put to bed with a statement win against a Manchester City side that hadn’t tasted defeat in any competition since August.
Villa look hungry, organised and determined to go on further and finally reclaim their Champions League spot this season. Liverpool certainly have the better squad, but what use is a group of individuals if they continue to put on listless displays like they have been?
Head-to-head
There aren’t many teams that Liverpool haven’t beaten handily over and over again in the past few seasons, and Villa are no exception.
Since the infamous 7-2 loss at Villa Park during COVID, a game I watched gleefully with the two Liverpools fans I lived with at the time that had spent the entirety of our time at university gloating about how amazing their team was, the Merseyside club are yet to be beaten by Villa again. Liverpool have won seven of their subsequent meetings and drawn three times, winning 2-0 in this fixture last season on their way to the title.
If Aston Villa are going to end this torrid run, this is their best opportunity in years. The form favours them but they haven’t won at Anfield since September 2014, Gabby Agbonlahor the hero on the day in a 1-0 win.
Expect goals too, there hasn’t been a 0-0 between these sides since 2008.
Key Battle
Virgil Van Dijk vs Morgan Rogers
It was a hard call this week, mostly because I’m not sure what sort of team Arne Slot is going to field to try and arrest this slump. Will he stick to his (rather expensive) guns or start tinkering away to try and find a way to make this Liverpool team click?
In the end, I went simple. Liverpool’s stalwart centre-half vs the magnifico at the heart of the Villa attack.
Rogers started slowly, as did the whole team, and has just started to get back to the player we saw last season and in this year’s England camps. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that his uptick in form has coincided with Villa returning to being a dominant threat. Rogers is a massive influence on any game if he’s on form, even when he isn’t directly providing or scoring the goals his elite close-quarters dribbling and flair make him a nightmare for defenders to deal with. Mark him too tightly, he can walk right through you, give him too much room and he’ll put one in the top corner from 25 yards. Player.
Virgil Van Dijk has ascended to almost a mythical figure over his years at Liverpool. Any defence containing the Dutchman instantly feels assured, calm and impossible to break down. His aura and legend are such that it’s hard to see through the smoke and realise that, this season, he might be a bit rubbish. Obviously, that’s hyperbole, he’s still been a strong presence at the back for Liverpool and even popped up with a couple of goals in Europe, but in recent weeks it seems like teams have stopped playing the idea of Van Dijk and started playing the man in front of them. One of the best to ever do it whose powers have now, at 34 years old, started to wain. The full-backs either side of him are all over the place, Konate keeps playing like it’s his first ever go at football and he is missing his ever-reliable miracle working goalkeeper stood behind him making impossible saves and reassuring the backline. I’m sure that, given a competent defence around him, he would be playing to the imperious standards he has set himself over the last few years. But that isn’t the case. Against Brentford he had to spend more time shouting and marshalling his teammates than actually focussing on the game and doing his defending, which eventually lead to him conceding the penalty.
If Liverpool want to flip the form table on its head, Virgil’s teammates will have to pull their socks up and allow him to do what he does best. Otherwise, they risk being the next side to fall victim to Morgan Rogers and his ever-developing skill set.
Preview
Football is football and it’s easy to look at things in black and white and make snap judgements based on what you see in front of you. Liverpool haven’t been good enough, that’s clear to see. Even in the games they won earlier in the season they looked shaky at the back and tended to snatch the points in the final few moments of the game. As easy as it is to unpick them tactically and criticise the heavy spending of this summer, it’s also important to remember that a lot of that side and the staff are grieving. Life goes on, and the football won’t stop coming for them, but it’s impossible to say how the tragic loss they experienced this summer might be impacting everything they do on and off the field.
Aston Villa come into the weekend in great shape and better rested than their opponents, the home side exiting the league cup in midweek at home to Crystal Palace to add to their dreadful form. After a statement win over Manchester City, this is a perfect opportunity to take yet another scalp and take their run to five wins in a row. They face a Liverpool side that look tired, disjointed and out of ideas on the Saturday before they have to host Real Madrid at Anfield midweek and then travel to Manchester City the following weekend. Struggling for form and with two huge games on the horizon, Villa could pick their hosts off before they even realise what’s happening to them.
A loss this weekend could see Liverpool drop as low as 12th in the table after 10 games. He was amazing last season and looked like the ideal successor to the Jurgen Klopp era, but is time running out for Arne Slot? If they lose in the Champions League and to City, the pressure will certainly ramp up.
A huge game at the top of the pyramid in the Big Bet this weekend! Who have you got?
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