INTER MILAN VS. LIVERPOOL
| Tuesday, December 9th |
Champions League | San Siro
8PM BST/3PM EST
Liverpool’s season has not gone to plan, particularly in the Premier League where the Reds sit 10th after 15 matchweeks, ten points
behind fourth and the Champions League places and ten points clear of the threat of relegation while managing a neutral goal differential. That might be a good place to be most seasons if you’re Crystal Palace—don’t look now but they’re currently in fourth—but for Liverpool, well, it’s not great.
And that’s before you get to the part where manager Arne Slot and one of the club’s all-time legends and the player who carried the team to the title last year, also known as Mohamed Salah, have had a falling out and it looks like their relationship may be beyond salvaging.
League worries, though, can wait for the weekend. Because after taking on Sunderland last week, this week it’s back to Europe—where Liverpool, at least relatively speaking, haven’t been quite as awful. Currently, the Reds are 13th and solidly in line to make the knockout rounds. And a win tomorrow would almost certainly push them into the top eight and back into the group set to get a bye through the first knockout round.
On paper, Inter are a tough test. They currently sit fourth in the Champions League table and are third in Serie A, just a point off the leaders. On the strength of the evidence to date, though, European sides haven’t been quite as good at frustrating Arne Slot’s Misfiring Reds as English opponents, and Inter are the highest scoring side in Italy at the moment. Which suggests Liverpool’s opponents might do what Liverpool would probably prefer, which is to try to take the game to them rather than sitting back and defending in a deep block.
Predicted Liverpool Lineup (4-2-3-1)
Alisson; Bradley, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Szoboszlai, Wirtz, Ekitike; Isak
In case you’ve been living under a rock (and also didn’t read the first part while somehow still managing to get to here), Mohamed Salah and Arne Slot have had a falling out and it looks like their relationship may be beyond salvaging.
As a result, Salah has been left behind in Liverpool for the match—and with Cody Gakpo ruled out for a couple of weeks due to injury while Federico Chiesa is a doubt, well, Slot might actually have found it useful to have not frozen out the player who carried him and the club to a title last season. He did, though, which means the Reds will be down at least two and probably three wingers. Which likely means either trying Hugo Ekitike on the wing where he often plays for France or giving a game to youngster Rio Ngumoha or putting Curtis Jones out there and having it be an all midfielder affair in support.
It’s hard not to include Ekitike somewhere on his current form, though, and it’s likely Slot will want to get Isak back into the mix after starting him on the bench over the weekend. At the back, meanwhile, if Conor Bradley is fit enough to play back-to-back matches, it might be the first real test as to whether Slot will take struggling Ibrahima Konaté out of the firing line.
The Managers Have Their Say
Arne Slot: “I think no one likes us to be in the situation we are in at the moment.”
Cristian Chivu: “Considering what they represent as a club and as a squad, they have players who know how to read moments, who can raise their level in the games that matter—and tomorrow is one of those.”
The Officials
Referee: Felix Zwayer Assistants: Robert Kempter, Christian Dietz Fourth Official: Martin Petersen VAR: Sören Storks
If you haven’t done so already, we’d love if you signed up for an SB Nation account and join the community at TLO. We’ll bring you and your fellow Liverpool fans from around the world full coverage of every match from the 2025-26 season in the Premier League, Champions League, and domestic cups along getting you breaking news, insight and opinion, tactical discussion, and post-match reactions as the new season plays out. Hopefully you’ll join us for it!
