Liverpool vs Aston Villa: Team news

For the hosts, Alisson Becker, Federico Chiesa, Harvey Elliott And Diogo Jota are excluded from Saturday’s 8pm GMT kick-off in the Premier League.

Slot was asked for an update on Jota during his pre-match press conference on Friday, explaining that the striker – who has missed the Reds’ last five games after being injured against Chelsea last month – was expected to be out for “a day or two”. will be available again two weeks after the international break.

Villa, meanwhile, will be without a midfielder Ross Barkley in L4 and defender Matty Cash also missed the Champions League defeat at Club Brugge on Wednesday.

Youri Tielemans is not part of the Belgian squad for the international window that follows this game, but the visitors hope he will play on Merseyside.

“Tielemans is expected to be fit to face the Reds this weekend before using the international period as rehabilitation,” the official website reported of the midfielder’s “minor complaint”.

Liverpool head coach Slot told the media that he does not expect Emery to spring a tactical surprise, but based on previous experience this season he will not take that opinion for granted.

“If you ask me now, I would say it’s not that difficult [to predict how Villa will play] because Unai Emery has been playing in a similar style at Aston Villa for years,” said Slot.

“It’s almost always the same formation, but sometimes it depends on the player, you can have different characteristics, but his style of play, his idea of ​​football was always the same.”

“That was also the case with Xabi Alonso, who we studied for I don’t know how many games, but he never had the idea of ​​playing [Victor] Bonifatius playing as a left winger and without number 9 [for Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday].

“He didn’t do that at all before we played them, but maybe that’s a compliment too – most managers think we have a very good team, so they think they have their game plan and not have to change their style of play a little bit.”

“If you ask me now if I expect Unai to change a lot, I wouldn’t expect that because he never did, not when he played [Manchester] City and neither when he played against Liverpool in recent years.

“But he can still change a bit in terms of personnel, he has different options at full-back [areas]different options on the wings, but it’s also a 4-4-2 that he’s been playing for many years.”

Alexis Mac Allister is just a yellow card away from a one-game ban in the Premier League this weekend.