We look ahead to Sunday’s Premier League game at Anfield with our Liverpool vs Brentford prediction and preview. Will Arne Slot win his first home game in charge of the Reds?
Liverpool vs Brentford Stats: The Key Insights
- The Opta supercomputer is backing Arne Slot to win his first Premier League match at Anfield, with Liverpool given a 71.2% chance of victory.
- Slot is aiming to become the first manager since 1991 to win his first two league games in charge of the Reds.
- Brentford have won just one of their six Premier League meetings with Liverpool.
Arne Slot will take charge of his first Premier League home match when Liverpool welcome Brentford to Anfield on Sunday.
Slot’s Reds took a while to kick into gear against Ipswich Town last week, but a much-improved second-half display saw them win 2-0 at Portman Road – Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah on target.
But with the famous Anfield atmosphere behind his side, Slot will be looking for Liverpool to make a statement of intent ahead of their trip to Old Trafford to face Manchester United on September 1.
Liverpool had 50 touches in the opposition box against Ipswich, the most on record in a manager’s first ever Premier League game (since 2008-09). But Slot will now want to see his side dominate for closer to 90 minutes as he aims to become the first Reds boss to win his opening two league games in charge since Graeme Souness in April 1991.
In fact, Liverpool are looking to start their Premier League season with two consecutive wins for the first time since 2021-22, a season in which they also began with an away win at a promoted East Anglian team (3-0 vs Norwich City).
Last week’s match was the 32nd time Salah has scored and assisted in a Premier League game, which drew him level with Thierry Henry. Only Wayne Rooney has scored and assisted in more games in the history of the competition (36 games). Salah also became the first player to score nine opening-day goals in the Premier League.
Brentford, meanwhile, travel to Merseyside on the back of a 2-1 home win over Crystal Palace, Yoane Wissa having bundled the ball in to seal the three points for Thomas Frank’s team.
Wissa has scored and assisted in each of his last three Premier League appearances for Brentford, the first player to achieve that for any club since Riyad Mahrez in December 2021 for Manchester City. No player in Premier League history has scored and assisted in four consecutive appearances.
Bryan Mbeumo opened the scoring for the Bees. Should he feature at Anfield, it will mark his 100th Premier League appearance, making him the fourth Brentford player to hit that milestone.
Ivan Toney was left out by Frank against Palace amid uncertainty over his future, though Brentford got the job done without him. Furthermore, the data suggests Mbeumo actually benefits when Toney is not in the team.
Mbeumo averages a goal or assist every 108 minutes in games he plays without Toney (14 goals, eight assists), compared to a goal involvement every 250 minutes in matches that feature the England striker (nine goals, 13 assists).
But Liverpool are the big favourites, and given their home record, it’s no surprise. The Reds have lost just two of their last 61 Premier League home games (W46 D13), while they have not lost at Anfield in the opening month of the season since 2015 (3-0 vs West Ham).
Liverpool vs Brentford Head-to-Head
Brentford have won four of their last seven Premier League matches (D1 L2), more than in their previous 21 games combined (W3 D4 L14).
However, in a run stretching back to 1939, Liverpool have won each of their last five home games against Brentford, keeping a clean sheet every time.
Brentford have won just one of their six Premier League meetings with Liverpool (D1 L4).
At least one team has scored 3+ goals in five of those six games, with the exception being a 1-0 win for the Reds in May 2023, so do not be shocked if there’s plenty of goals in this one.
Liverpool vs Brentford Prediction
Across the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 pre-match simulations, Liverpool emerged as winners 71.2% of the time.
As such, Brentford’s chances of leaving Anfield with a shock win are pretty slender at just 12.6%, while the draw was the end result in 16.2% of the sims, and that’s an outcome the Bees would likely be content with.
After all, in our season projections, Liverpool are one of just three clubs to win the Premier League in more than 0.1% of the simulations, doing so in 5.1%. Brentford finished 11th most often (11.1%).
Liverpool vs Brentford Predicted Lineups
Liverpool: Alisson, Andrew Robertson, Virgil van Dijk, Jarell Quansah, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai, Luis Díaz, Mohamed Salah, Diogo Jota.
Brentford: Mark Flekken, Kristoffer Ajer, Ethan Pinnock, Nathan Collins, Mads Roerslev, Mathias Jensen, Vitaly Janelt, Christian Nørgaard, Kevin Schade, Yoane Wissa, Bryan Mbeumo.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides:
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