Liverpool will look to bounce back from last Saturday’s disappointing 2-2 away draw to recently promoted Fulham when they take on Crystal Palace at Anfield on Monday night.
The Reds have won 13 of their last 14 league matches on Merseyside and should be confident of replicating the kind of form that saw them boast the best home record across the division last season.
Palace meanwhile suffered defeat in their opening clash of the campaign, going down 2-0 at home to Arsenal.
The Londoners have a pretty torrid recent record against Jurgen Klopp’s men, losing each of the last 11 league meetings. The two sides also met in the summer for a pre-season clash that the Reds won 2-0.
Despite this, Patrick Vieira has built a highly competitive side during his 12 months at Selhurst Park, and the Eagles have a number of players who have the potential to cause Liverpool problems.
It’s likely that their best chance of success could well come early into the game, particularly given how slow the Reds have started in their most recent league encounters. Aleksandar Mitrovic’s opening goal just after the 30 minute mark last week meant that Klopp’s men have conceded first in each of their last five league matches.
Numerous football studies conclude that scoring the game's opening goal will usually lead to victory roughly 70 per cent of the time, which highlights how costly a vulnerability like this can be.
Liverpool have done a good job of being the exception to that rule and actually managed to avoid defeat in all five of those matches in which they initially fell behind. In fact, the Reds have earned 115 points from losing positions since Klopp joined the club - that’s the most across the league during that period.
Despite this, it’s a trend the German boss will be keen to end sooner rather than later. The cause of the problem isn’t an obvious one, though it would seem that opponents are trying to be braver in how they approach taking on Liverpool.
Fulham for example were fast out the blocks last week, pressing Liverpool hard and creating dangerous goalscoring opportunities. Inside the opening 30 minutes, they outshout the Reds six to two.
James Milner admitted in an interview with Sky Sports earlier this week that teams are watching Liverpool closely and aware of how they play, which means they’re perhaps finding better gameplans to overcome them.
“Teams watch us, they know how we want to play," he said.
"We have to keep adapting, they are going to keep improving so it’s important we keep adapting and getting better also.”
Klopp and his staff have proven with their record that they can more often than not find ways to adjust in-game to find a response, however it’s normally not until half-time that changes can be made.
Sooner or later, that’s going to be too late, therefore finding a way to better deal with the initial onslaught they seem to be facing from opponents should be a priority. Especially given it’s set to be another title race that goes right to the wire.
