Manchester United have picked up some key injuries ahead of their meeting with Liverpool on Sunday. And that is not necessarily a good thing for the Reds.
Paul Pogba is out of the clash, while David de Gea is a strong doubt, via the BBC. The latter may play but United will be hoping his groin injury needed just one week to heal.
There is a very strong chance that United will be without both. Pogba and De Gea may be the most talented players at Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s disposal and so it’s easy to see this as a positive for Liverpool.
But it might not be. It could, in fact, just complicate things.
Put simply, United are a bad team right now. They sit in 12th, far closer to the bottom than the top. If they doubled their points, they’d still be as far from the top than they are now from the bottom.
Liverpool will expect a win – their first at Old Trafford for five years – and even more so, given the injuries.
But there are two potential negatives. Firstly, there’s the chance of a fight-back from United who will put out a team with their backs against the wall.
They know this won’t be an even match and they know they will have to fight to win it. That may make this a tougher test than the usual, pretty complacent, United team.
And talking about complacency, what about Liverpool? They are suddenly playing a weaker version of an already poor team and we have seen that complacency in recent weeks.
Liverpool looked off their game against Sheffield United, gave away a 3-0 lead against Salzburg, and needed a last-minute winner last time out.
There’s a real danger of complacency now that United have injuries too, and Liverpool need to watch out.
What looked like a routine win now looks a little more complicated.
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