Sky Sports pundit Charlie Nicholas has predicted that Liverpool will lose their first Premier League game of the season against Wolves on Thursday.
What’s the story?
The Reds travel to Molineux this midweek to face a side that are in the hunt for the top four and have already done the double over current champions Manchester City this season.
In his matchday predictions, the 58-year-old said: “This is a cracking game and Liverpool will be on such a high. I genuinely thought Liverpool looked tired and leggy, especially at the end, against Manchester United. Have they enough to come in and cover this one up? Jurgen Klopp took Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino off in the latter stages, but it was a case of hanging in there and going a bit more defensively. I have never really seen that from Klopp but some of those players were dead on their feet.
“As cool as Virgil van Dijk and the back four have been, there was a vulnerability there. It was a massive game and they got the result. That being said, I see Liverpool’s first defeat of the season coming on Thursday, but it will not change the destiny of the Premier League title.”
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Not impossible
It does look unlikely that Nuno Espirito Santo’s men will be able to pick up all three points against a team that is beginning to look like champions elect. Jurgen Klopp’s side have 64 points from their first 22 matches in the competition – a record at this point of the season for any side in the history of the top five leagues in Europe – and they haven’t lost a league fixture in 39 outings.
However, Wolves are a side who could cause them problems. With Adama Traore in their team – the 23-year-old created two goals in their last match against Southampton at St. Mary’s Stadium, and has four strikes and six assists in the competition for the season – anything is possible, and they can take plenty of heart from their display at Anfield in December, where they lost 1-0 after Pedro Neto had an equaliser ruled out for the smallest of offside margins.
In all fairness, though, it is actually irrelevant whether Wolves win. With a considerable lead at the top – and two games in hand to boot – it will take a lot more than one defeat to prevent the Reds from winning the title this term.
They only need to win 10 of their remaining 16 games to confirm their spot on top of the pile. Given they have been victorious in 21 out of 22 this campaign to date, picking up those points look to be almost a guarantee.
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