Community Shield clash with Palace a ‘good challenge’ for Liverpool – Arne Slot | OneFootball

Liverpool will get a final tune-up for their Premier League title defence when Sunday’s Community Shield pits them against Crystal Palace in what Arne Slot has called a “good challenge” for his side.

Slot has been busy strengthening a squad that won the league by 10 points last term by spending the best part of £300million on midfielder Florian Wirtz, forward Hugo Ekitike, left-back Milos Kerkez, right-back Jeremie Frimpong and goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili, with more incomings possible.

After a pre-season campaign in which they have faced Preston, Stoke, AC Milan, Yokohama F. Marinos and Athletic Bilbao, Sunday’s trip to Wembley will be their first meeting with Premier League opposition since Palace held Slot’s men to a 1-1 draw on the final day of last season.

“It is nice if you can start the season with the chance of winning something,” Slot said. “Normally you have to play numerous games before you can win something.

“If it’s the League Cup, FA Cup, let alone (the) Premier League or Champions League, normally you win something in the end of the season. Now we have a chance to win something in the beginning of the season.

“Unfortunately, we face a very good Crystal Palace that have been very difficult to win against for us, because we played 1-1 against them in the last game of the season.

“They showed in the last final – and even in the semi-final, by the way, as well – how difficult it is to win a one-off game (against) them.

“I think most of the players that they have are still there, so even more reason to know what a difficult team it is to play against.”

Palace upset the odds to beat Manchester City 1-0 in the FA Cup final in May after a 3-0 semi-final win over Aston Villa.

Oliver Glasner’s side overcame a poor start to the campaign to set a new club record for Premier League points and also made the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup.

“Counter-attacks, set-pieces, long balls to (Jean-Philippe) Mateta…they have also the individual quality of their forwards who can create something out of nothing,” Slot said of Sunday’s opponents. “They are a very good team.

“Bilbao and Milan and (Yokohama) also gave us a lot of competition and that is what Palace are going to do because they kept their team together so they will hit the ground running again.

“They are still the same team – a team that performed really well especially at the end of last season so it’s a good challenge for us.”

Alexis Mac Allister, who had a delayed start to pre-season after suffering an injury at the end of last term, is a contender to start at Wembley after playing 25 minutes against Yokohama last week and a little under an hour of a friendly against Athletic Bilbao on Monday.

“He was out for two months I think, or longer because we didn’t play him in the last four games of the season,” Slot said. “He trained with us since a week now, played 30 minutes, 45 minutes.

“So that’s not a situation where you would start a player (and) play him for 90 minutes. Starting is possible but definitely not for 90 minutes.”