Gary Neville has made his prediction for Liverpool vs Arsenal in the Premier League this weekend — leaving Roy Keane baffled by what the former Manchester United man thinks will happen.
Arne Slot’s side has already wrapped up the Premier League title and therefore the Dutchman made six changes to his starting XI at Stamford Bridge last weekend. A week on, Liverpool will host Arsenal at Anfield.
Speaking on the Stick To Football podcast, brought to you by Sky Bet, Neville and Keane were among those to make their predictions for the weekend. And the pair were not in agreement over what might unfold.
“Liverpool were poor at the weekend, weren’t they really?” Keane said. “The last few games, they beat Spurs, poor against West Ham, poor against Chelsea.”
“He left his midfield out,” Paul Scholes said. “They’re still at home, so a bit of pride kicks in,” Keane added. “We’ll give Liverpool two goals. 2-1 Liverpool.”
Neville and Scholes, meanwhile, went for 0-0. “It’s not going to be 0-0,” Keane said. He was having none of the prediction, insisting that there is “going to be goals”.
(Image: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)
Slot said in his pre-match press conference that he would continue rotating his line-up, though he does want to win. He has already confirmed that Conor Bradley will start and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who announced he would be leaving this week, will be left out.
“A lot of things influence decisions I make and one of them is losing,” Slot said. “I am not looking to lose all four games [to finish the season] but there are more things that go into a line-up than losing or rotating
“We will see. Conor [Bradley] will start. He needs playing time, games under his belt to be prepared for next season.”
Mikel Arteta, meanwhile, has confirmed that his players will give Liverpool a guard of honor before the game kicks off. That was expected, but there is no Premier League obligation for teams to perform such a gesture.
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“They deserve that,” Arteta said in his pre-match press conference. “They have been the better team, the most consistent. They fully deserve it and that’s sport. When somebody is better, you have to applaud.”
“Liverpool has won the title with less points than we had in the last two seasons,” Arteta said earlier this week. “With the points from the last two seasons, we have two Premier Leagues.”
That, though, is not true. Arteta was overlooking the fact that Liverpool has collected 82 points from 35 games, while Arsenal had 80 points after the same number of games last season.
Liverpool could still finish the season with 91 points, which would have been enough to deny the Gunners the title in each of the last two seasons. The Reds have also finished well past the 90-point barrier twice before, only to lose the title to Manchester City.
Liverpool.com says: Games with nothing riding on them are so hard to predict, but goals would seem certain. With defenders not being as switched on as normal, both sides keeping a clean sheet seems unlikely.
