After what seems like years, Liverpool are back in action following the international break. They visit Spurs for the early kick-off on Saturday to ensure the Premier League comes back with a bang. This fixture was intended to be the moment Spurs would return home to their rebuilt White Hart Lane stadium. However, building work has taken longer than estimated, as often is the case meaning Spurs continue to use Wembley and Liverpool return to the scene of one of their worst games last season.
That defeat did however prove to be a big turning point for the way Jurgen Klopp did things and since then Liverpool has gone from strength to strength since. Certainly things this season could not have gone much better with The Reds sitting top of the league after winning all 4 of their opening games. However, while things haven't exactly been easy. The games do start to get tougher from here, Tottenham is the first in a bunch of massive games over the next few weeks which will surely show how serious a contender Liverpool are for the Premier League title.
While Tottenham definitely represents the toughest test so far, it could be a fortunate time to be playing them with the recent news that Dele Ali and Hugo Lloris will both miss the game after picking up injuries during the international break. It's also unlikely that will be involved after featuring prominently for his country in the Asian Games. Spurs still have a squad capable of putting out a really strong side but those 3 players will represent a major blow to their chances, particularly Ali who seems to thrive in the biggest games of the season. Liverpool suffered some injury heartbreak of their own as Adam Lallana has again picked up an injury after only recently coming back to fitness. He joins longer-term absentees Lovren and Oxlade-Chamberlain on the sidelines for Klopp.
Liverpool have won their opening 4 games so far, but the performances have not always been great. While many people point to the ability to win matches while not being at your best as a mark of champions you get the feeling Liverpool have to be at their best in order to get the 3 points against a team like Spurs, who also have desires of challenging for the title. The games are going to be coming thick and fast over the next couple of weeks causing people to wonder if Klopp will be rotating his stars and using some of the depth he bought in during the summer. I do think that he will stick with the lineup that he has maintained for most of the season so far, the back 5 picks itself at the moment and while the front 3 haven't been at the height of their powers they are still contributing a healthy amount of goals so no reason why they'd be disrupted. The only real question is regarding the midfield, Klopp spoke in his press conference ahead of the game about Fabinho needing more time to learn the new style of play and so it looks like three of either Milner, Keita, Henderson and Wijnaldum will occupy the midfield.
It should be an exciting game between two sides who play really aggressive football and also each has one of the best goalscoring threats in the league in their sides. Memories of that 4-1 defeat last season still haunt Liverpool fans but other than that historically Liverpool has a decent record against Spurs and have racked up some big wins of their own. Wins and losses at this point in the season don't win you league titles but what a statement it would be for Liverpool to maintain their 100% record and record 5 wins out of 5 for the season.