Liverpool would not have seven points on the board right now if it wasn’t for Alisson in goal. The Brazilian pulled off some excellent saves at St James’ Park to keep his team in the game before Darwin Nunez was able to come off the bench to win the game for the Merseyside team. The Uruguayan will surely start this weekend encounter against Aston Villa.
Darwin showed his scoring prowess when bagging a brace against the Magpies and the forward can cause problems for an Aston Villa side who showed a weak defensive underbelly when losing 5-1 to Newcastle, although they subsequently recovered to land a 4-0 win over Everton before a 3-1 success at Burnley.
It’s hard to get too excited about the price for Liverpool despite their strong start. They were not too convincing against Chelsea in their opener and Bournemouth created plenty of problems in the following clash before a backs-to-the-wall effort on Tyneside. Van Dijk is their defensive leader and it means that Joel Matip will be partnered with Ibrahima Kounate.
We think that the Villans can certainly serve things up at Anfield and they’ll go to Merseyside with a game plan of their own. The slight drawback is a midweek European encounter against Hibernian although a 5-0 first leg lead means that Emery is likely to rest star players such as Ollie Watkins, Moussa Diaby and John McGinn.