Liverpool vs Chelsea Preview: Salah's Final Anfield Date, Champions League at Stake & Pedro's Lone Threat
Mohamed Salah will not be on the pitch. A muscle injury picked up against Crystal Palace on the 25th of April leaves him out of the group, and almost certainly out of the last scheduled meeting with Chelsea in his Liverpool career. Salah confirmed in March this would be his ninth and final season at Anfield, by mutual contract termination, and Saturday's lunchtime kickoff was always the moment of one final attempt against a side he never quite cracked.
5 goals in 21 career meetings since arriving at Liverpool in 2017. A goal every 0.24 games against Chelsea, against a career rate of 0.59 across his Liverpool tenure as a whole.
Chelsea contained Salah better than almost anyone he faced in red. But four of those five came at Anfield, and Anfield is the venue he is missing.
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Salah's goals in 21 Liverpool meetings with Chelsea, against a career rate of 0.59 per game.
Limping in, but the prize sits four points away
The first match of May ended 3-2 to Manchester United at Old Trafford, and the manner mattered as much as the result. Slot's side conceded twice in the opening 15 minutes and a third in the second half, the kind of giveaways that would have been unthinkable last autumn when Liverpool were pressing teams into submission.
Slot admitted as much in his Friday press conference, that defending in the low block has exposed his side too often, that there are moments in which Liverpool now need a strong individual performance to win games rather than relying on the cruise control that defined the autumn.
Yet they remain fourth, and they remain in command of their own Champions League fate. Three wins from their last four Premier League matches, a 2-0 over Fulham, a 2-1 derby win at Hill Dickinson Stadium in Everton's first Merseyside derby at their new ground, and a 3-1 dispatch of Crystal Palace at Anfield. The European nights have been less kind, two PSG defeats in a week ending the Champions League campaign, but the league position is what matters now.
Six points clear of Bournemouth, seven clear of Brentford, with three games left. Beat Chelsea on Saturday and a single point at Aston Villa next Friday gets them over the line. Slot's challenge is steering a side that has stopped being the pressing monster of the autumn into one that can grind out points with the wires hanging out.
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Maximum points needed from three remaining matches to confirm Champions League qualification.
Their worst goalscoring run since 1912
Chelsea have scored once in their last six Premier League matches. That is not a typo. Their previous five had ended in defeat with no Chelsea goal scored, the worst run by a Chelsea side since November 1912, broken only by João Pedro's 90th-minute consolation in a 3-1 home defeat to Nottingham Forest on the 4th of May.
The collapse has been comprehensive enough to cost Liam Rosenior his job. He was sacked on the 22nd of April after a 3-0 defeat at Brighton, with the club turning to youth coach Calum McFarlane on an interim basis through the end of the season. McFarlane has overseen a single league match, the Forest defeat. The bright spot, if anyone is looking, was the 1-0 FA Cup semi-final win over Leeds at Wembley two weeks ago, courtesy of an Enzo Fernández strike, and it bought Chelsea a final at Wembley against Manchester City on the 16th of May.
That FA Cup target is now what the season hangs on. Sixth place is currently held by Bournemouth on 52 points, with Brentford behind on 51 and Brighton on 50, and Chelsea sit ninth on 48 with three games left. Top five is mathematically gone. The London side assembled at a cost north of a billion pounds travels to Anfield with the FA Cup final eight days away.
Without Salah, who else is missing?
The Salah absence is the headline, but the Liverpool list has shifted in the last week. Alisson is also out, with Slot describing both keeper and forward on Friday as "very, very, very close" to returning, but not for this game. The good news is that Alexander Isak is back, having returned to training earlier in the week, with Florian Wirtz and Ibrahima Konaté joining him on Friday for the first time in days. Giorgi Mamardashvili was also on the grass on Friday, the goalkeeper jersey now to be decided between him and Freddie Woodman.
Chelsea bring their own list, less long but no less consequential. Robert Sánchez took a head injury against Forest on Monday and is out, leaving Filip Jörgensen in goal. Estêvão, the Brazilian who scored a 95th-minute winner at Stamford Bridge in October, is out for the season. So is the academy graduate Jesse Derry, with his own head injury. Pedro Neto and Alejandro Garnacho are carrying knocks and are doubts. Levi Colwill and Reece James are returning, with both pushing for first starts after long absences. Mykhailo Mudryk remains unavailable, having been handed a four-year FA ban that is now subject to appeal.
Predicted Liverpool XI (4-2-3-1): Woodman; Jones, Konaté, Van Dijk, Robertson; Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Szoboszlai, Wirtz, Gakpo; Isak
Predicted Chelsea XI (4-2-3-1): Jörgensen; Gusto, Chalobah, Adarabioyo, Cucurella; Lavia, Caicedo; Palmer, Fernández, João Pedro; Delap
Liverpool's set-piece problem, Chelsea's one-button attack
Two tactical truths frame this match before kickoff. The first is that Liverpool have the worst non-penalty set-piece goal difference in the Premier League at minus nine, with three goals scored and 12 conceded across the season. Of those 12 conceded, seven came from corners and three from throw-ins. Liverpool's attacking returns from dead balls amount to a single corner-scored goal all year. For a team carrying Van Dijk, Konaté, and Mac Allister at the highest level of aerial competence, the deficit is structural rather than physical, a coaching question that the new set-piece appointment has not yet solved.
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Liverpool's non-penalty set-piece goal difference, the worst in the Premier League this season.
The second is that Chelsea's attack now runs through one channel. Cole Palmer's nine league goals include five from the penalty spot, leaving four open-play strikes from his 58 attempts. Enzo Fernández's eight goals are valuable but he is a deep-eight, not a striker. McFarlane's most likely XI puts Pedro at the tip, Palmer drifting in from the right, and asks the pair to manufacture chances against a side that has kept only one clean sheet in its last seven Anfield league matches. Liverpool's vulnerabilities on dead balls are exactly the route a low-block away side would target. Whether Chelsea has the players, or the coach, or the concentration to do it is a different question.
Pedro's loneliness, Palmer's left foot
João Pedro vs Virgil van Dijk. This is the matchup that decides whether Chelsea generate any threat at all. Pedro is 15 goals into his Premier League season, more than any other Chelsea player by some distance. He plays as a number nine, drops into the channels, drifts wide left when Chelsea need to manufacture pressure. Van Dijk, the league's most reliable aerial defender at 74% duels won and 4.54 won per 90, has not missed a Liverpool league minute this season. Even from the dead-ball route Liverpool keep giving up, Van Dijk is the obstacle.
Cole Palmer vs Liverpool's discipline. Palmer plays through Liverpool's right side, where Curtis Jones is most likely to start at right-back with Jeremie Frimpong slightly higher of him. The threat is not what Palmer creates from open play, where his return this season is modest, but what he extracts when defenders mistime tackles. 5 of his 9 league goals this season are penalties, every one struck with his left foot, although Matz Sels saved his most recent attempt against Forest on Monday. Palmer is the conversion engine: if Liverpool concede a soft foul in the box, it is 1-0. The question for Slot is whether Frimpong's natural aggression is calibrated to the cost of giving up the soft penalty.
Discipline, not pressing, is what keeps Palmer quiet.
The Rodgers ghost
Across the last decade Stamford Bridge has been the harder battleground, while Anfield has belonged to Liverpool. Slot, however, enters this fixture trying to avoid an unwanted distinction. Liverpool lost 2-1 at Stamford Bridge in October when Estêvão scored that 95th-minute winner, and a defeat at home this weekend would make Slot the first Liverpool manager to lose both league fixtures against Chelsea in a single season since Brendan Rodgers in 2013-14.
That season carries cargo of its own. Chelsea's win at Anfield in April 2014 is its own footnote in the rivalry's history, the one most Liverpool supporters do not need spelling out. Slot, who arrived as Klopp's successor with the briefest of grace periods and is now the subject of summer speculation linking him to Ajax, would prefer not to extend the parallel.
Four points and a closing window
Premier League Standings Snapshot
| Team | # | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Liverpool | 4 | 35 | +12 | 58 |
 Aston Villa | 5 | 35 | +4 | 58 |
 Bournemouth | 6 | 35 | +3 | 52 |
 Brentford | 7 | 35 | +6 | 51 |
 Brighton | 8 | 35 | +7 | 50 |
 Chelsea | 9 | 35 | +6 | 48 |
Liverpool four points from confirmed Champions League football. Chelsea ninth, top five out of reach with three games to play.
Liverpool need a maximum of four points from their three remaining Premier League games to confirm Champions League football for next season. Even a defeat on Saturday leaves them in front of Bournemouth and Brentford on points, with both chasers needing to win out and catch them on goal difference, complicated further by the fact that Liverpool play Brentford directly on the final day. The arithmetic is comfortable.
For Chelsea, the league is over in all but the mathematics. Top five was lost the moment Forest's lead allowed Pedro to break the drought, and Bournemouth, four points clear in sixth, is realistically too far to catch with three games to play. The FA Cup final on the 16th of May is what now defines the season, and McFarlane's calculus on Saturday is whether to throw Colwill at the back and James at right-back into a fixture with no league reward, or nurse them for Wembley. The away end may be the only group at Anfield with nothing material on the table.
45 matches and a familiar pattern
Craig Pawson takes the whistle. Pawson has been a Select Group referee since 2013 and oversees this season at roughly 2.47 yellows per game and 0.29 penalties per game, both broadly typical Premier League rates. The Liverpool history is generally good for the Reds, who have won 30 of his 45 games in charge, with eight defeats. Six penalties have been awarded in those matches and two Liverpool players sent off. Given the discipline question hovering over the Palmer matchup, the cost of a soft foul in the box is exactly the kind of decision Pawson has historically been willing to make.
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Liverpool wins from 45 matches officiated by Craig Pawson.
Referee Stats: Craig Pawson
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| PL Matches (25-26) | 19 |
| Yellow Cards | 48 |
| Avg Cards/Match | 2.6 |
| Penalties Awarded | 6 |
| Liverpool Career Record | 30W / 7D / 8L (45 matches) |
Select Group referee since March 2013. Six penalties and two Liverpool red cards across his 45 matches with the Reds.
The case for both, and the case for one
Saturday is a stress test of how much of either club's identity remains intact when the central characters are absent or unsteady. McFarlane is interim, four weeks into a job that ends with the season. Slot has rejected Ajax's enquiry only for the questions to keep coming, and Salah, the Liverpool talisman, sits indoors with a muscle injury.
Three of the four most-discussed names in English football this week have been on the touchline rather than the pitch.
Liverpool's case for the favourite tag is structural: Anfield, the table, the depth in midfield, the defensive lead they hold over a Chelsea side that has not scored a non-Pedro goal in its last six league matches. Chelsea's case is harder to articulate. They are a team without form, without their first-choice keeper, without their main creator on the right wing, and with a manager doing his best to be a steadying voice on a four-month contract. They have to be capable of more than they have shown, but their season suggests otherwise. Liverpool will be heavy favourites at 12.30, and the only question worth asking is whether Chelsea, with Wembley eight days away, have anything to give to a fixture that does nothing for them.
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