LASK VS. LIVERPOOL
| Wednesday, October 14th |
Champions League | Raiffeisen Arena
5:45PM BST/12:45PM EST
Sunday’s experience watching Liverpool struggle against not just a Manchester City side recently found guilty of industrial-scale financial doping to the tune of £900M over almost a decade and the subsequent cover-up of said doping but also the officiating, which skewed in City’s favour to a degree that raised eyebrows given Abu Dhabi’s sportswashing front was just found guilty of industrial-scale financial doping,
was not a lot of fun.
For better or worse, though, we don’t get much time to dwell on that, with Austrian side LASK up next in the Champions League on Wednesday and an early kickoff in store for Andoni Iraola’s Reds.
Predicted Liverpool Lineup (4-2-3-1)
Alisson; Araujo, Jacquet, Van Dijk, Kerkez; Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Barcola, Wirtz, Munoz; Koumas
With Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo, and Dominik Szoboszlai set to miss another match and Iraola given a thin and unbalanced squad to work with by departed sporting director Richard Hughes, the starting eleven is likely to look very similar to the one that faced City.
It’s possible Lewis Koumas isn’t ready to play twice back to back after doing a lot of hard running on Sunday, and if he isn’t it could be a case of swapping in Rio Ngumoha on the wing and either moving Bradley Barcola into the middle or pushing Florian Wirtz into the false nine, but the latter in particular seems unlikely without Szoboszlai available to play in midfield and our default expectation is that we’ll see basically the same eleven.
It’s also possible Jeremie Frimpong could come in for Roanld Araujo given that on paper at least LASK are a weaker opponent and Frimpong’s going to need to be given another chance sooner or later, but on the flip side it’s clear right now Araujo is Liverpool’s best right back option and they could really use a win to boost the mood after Sunday.
After winning the Austrian Bundesliga last season, LASK are third in the early going this season, with Dietmar Kühbauer’s side five points off the pace and third not just in total points but in goals scored, goals conceded, and goal differential. Their goal threat comes primarily through Austrian international forward Christoph Lang and uncapped American Samuel Adeniran.
The Managers Have Their Say
Andoni Iraola: “We want to come here and win. Probably we are the favourites but you have to come here, do the job, and play well—otherwise away games in the Champions League are never easy.”
Dietmar Kühbauer: “We are clearly the underdogs, but the squad must truly believe something is possible. If we just go out there to exchange jerseys at the end we’ve already lost. We need 100% focus and collective belief from the first minute to achieve a historic result.”
The Officials
Referee: Tobias Stieler (GER) Assistants: Lasse Koslowski & Jonas Weickenmeier Fourth Official: Matthias Jollenbeck VAR: Tomasz Kwiatkowski & Lukas Fahndrich
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