Beat Atalanta and Liverpool set up two very fun matches next month

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Liverpool can set up a pair of fun-looking matches if they beat Atalanta later today. The Reds face the Italians at Anfield in the UEFA Champions League.

Liverpool face Atalanta tonight having beat them 5-0 in Bergamo earlier in the month. It was a scintillating performance but one they probably won’t recreate at Anfield.

That’s simply because of a terrible fixture schedule. Liverpool played Leicester City on Sunday evening and it’ll be Atalanta tonight. Then for reasons we don’t understand, the Reds have the early kick-off on Saturday.

That’s fewer than three days rest between Atalanta and Brighton. Madness for a team that already has so many injuries to deal with.

But Liverpool have little choice. The fixture list doesn’t let up, either, and the team will need to play around a game every three days up until January 2nd.

Beat Atalanta, though, and Liverpool make things easier on themselves. Not only that, but they set up a couple of fun-looking games.

Reward

The reward for beating Atalanta is early qualification from the Champions League group. As a result, the remaining games against Ajax and Midtjylland next month won’t mean much.

And there’s real potential to mix things up there. Klopp definitely wouldn’t use the first-team in such games – we’d get to see ‘the rest’.

That includes squad players we want to see more of, like Takumi Minamino or Kostas Tsimikas. As well as some youngsters from the brightest academy Liverpool have had since the ’90s.

Players like Billy Koumetio, Leighton Clarkson, Jake Cain, and – if he can recover from injury in time – Paul Glatzel would be in line for Champions League starts. Klopp described that quartet as sensational just last week.

They’d be fun game against good opposition. Some of the most enjoyable games of last season featured academy players, in fact.

There was the 5-5 against Arsenal, the Merseyside derby win with Curtis Jones announcing himself to the world. As well as that win with the kids over Shrewsbury at Anfield.

If we’re lucky enough to have some fans back for those games, they could be very special as we get good looks at promising players.

And all we need is to beat Atalanta tonight.