Neil Jones has suggested that Jurgen Klopp could make a few changes to his Liverpool starting XI today from that which began the win over Aston Villa 13 days ago.
The international break saw four Reds players travel to South America and back to represent their countries, three of whom (Alexis Mac Allister, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz) saw game-time for their respective nations.
They only arrived back on Merseyside on Thursday morning, with the manager making no secret of his annoyance about the 12:30 kick-off this afternoon for the visit to Wolves off the back of having many of his squad traversing the globe over the past fortnight.
Jones was previewing the game at Molineux on his eponymous YouTube channel when he addressed the possibility of Klopp making some changes to the Liverpool starting XI on top of the enforced omission of Trent Alexander-Arnold through injury.
The journalist outlined: “He said that Alexis Mac Allister arrived back in the early hours of Thursday morning. Darwin and Luis Diaz arrived about 9 o’clock in the morning on Thursday, so they’ve only had a clearing day at Kirkby and then a full day’s training on Friday. Does that mean he leaves them out? Possibly.
“I would suggest that Nunez and Diaz will probably start on the bench. I’m not sure about Mac Allister; probably as well. He’s got Ryan Gravenberch, the new signing that could come in and potentially make his debut in the game.”
Given the enormous travel that Liverpool’s South American stars would’ve completed in recent days, we wouldn’t be surprised if Klopp utilised the depth of his squad to leave the likes of Mac Allister, Diaz and Nunez (each of whom were among the starters against Aston Villa) out of his starting line-up today.
There are players in Gravenberch, Diogo Jota and Cody Gakpo (the latter two scored twice each on international duty) who could easily come in without diminishing the quality of the team, while we’d still have genuine gamechangers to come off the bench if needed.
The XI selected by the Reds manager for the trip to Molineux promises to be very intriguing indeed.
You can view Jones’ match preview below, via Neil Jones: Covering Liverpool on YouTube: