Liverpool’s title defence begins at Anfield as they host Championship winners Leeds United in Saturday’s late kickoff.
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Liverpool absolutely destroyed the competition on their way to their first title in 30 years, finishing a massive 18 points clear of second-placed Manchester City. A key to this was their home form where they remained unbeaten the whole season, with 18 wins and a draw in their 19 home league games.
While their challengers are out there splashing the cash to strengthen their squads, Liverpool have been a bit frugal in this transfer market, doing just a couple of modest deals, with Klopp opting to stick with the crop of players that delivered them to the promised land.
With both Arsenal, who beat them in the Community Shield, and Chelsea lined up after this, the onus is on Klopp to keep his troops revved up for the title challenge, which will definitely much tougher than last season.
After a 16-year hiatus, Leeds United are back to the stage where they ruffled quite a few feathers a few years before they fading away and dropping to the lower division. Like their opponents, they too had one of those dominant performances on their way to winning the Championship last season and gaining automatic promotion. They won the Championship title by a 10-point margin over second-placed West Brom after going on a six-match winning run to end the season.
Leeds have good players on their squad and have done well to add a few others in the transfer window to bolster their depth, top among them being Valencia’s Rodrigo who was signed for a reported £30m.
Both Klopp and Bielsa are proponents of the high-pressing brand of attacking football and that makes this opening game one of the most intriguing to look out for. After a solid start to last season, particularly on the defensive end, Liverpool appeared to lose a step on defence after the restart of the season and they were exposed severally as they huffed and puffed to the finish line. Leeds have done some brisk business in the summer transfer market and they certainly have the players that could cause Liverpool some problems at the back. Both of these teams scored lots of goals in their respective campaigns last season, Liverpool scoring 85 goals in the Premier League while Leeds found the back of the net an equally impressive 77 times. Both teams will have opportunities in this game and we fancy them both to score @ 1.86 with Betway as our first betting betting prediction for this game.
Liverpool’s performances at Anfield have been their bread and butter and a key narrative in their title success last season where they picked 55 from a possible 57 points. The last time they actually lost a home league game was over 3 years ago. They’ve since played 59 matches and counting without defeat. Betway betting app is offering a price of 1.65 for a combo bet of Double Chance Liverpool/Draw and Over 2.5 goals. In the context of this game, we feel there is some value in snapping it up for our final prediction.
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