Liverpool vs Brighton: Match Preview, Latest Team News and Predicted Lineup | OneFootball

Liverpool vs Brighton – Premier League Preview

Date: Saturday, 13th December 2025

Venue: Anfield

Kick-off: 15.00 BST

Liverpool returns to Anfield on Saturday with something they haven’t felt in the Premier League for far too long: a reference point. Wednesday’s 0–1 win away at Inter Milan wasn’t just a Champions League triumph — it was a reintroduction to defensive maturity, collective sacrifice, and tactical clarity. It wasn’t a renaissance, not yet, but it was the first time in weeks that Liverpool looked like a team capable of aligning ambition with execution.

Whether that performance represents the beginning of a climb or simply another short-lived plateau is unknown. Domestic form has been unforgiving, inconsistent, and at times completely unrecognisable from the team that lifted the Premier League trophy last May. Saturday will tell us far more than Wednesday did and I’m reluctant to believe a corner has been turned, just yet.

Brighton arrive with freedom, confidence, and their usual appetite for chaos, while Liverpool — still carrying the scars of the Nottingham Forest humiliation and the disjointed collapse against PSV — must prove that what happened in Milan can finally translate back home. Draws against Leeds and Sunderland offer little in the way of hope, as the talk of replacement managers starts to pick up.

And then there is Mohamed Salah.

This may be his final appearance at Anfield. He departs for AFCON on Monday. He may be sold before he ever returns.

If this is goodbye, it must be a meaningful one, though there’s a real chance he may not even make the squad.

For Arne Slot, whose job security remains a weekly debate, this is not a match he can afford to misread or take for granted. Nor is it one Liverpool can afford to let slip.

Winning isn’t optional. It is demanded and the free hits have now run dry.

Brighton: Rotations, Reinvention, and the Same Old Problem for Liverpool

Brighton arrive at Anfield in the same way they usually do: brave, structured, and utterly convinced they can expose Liverpool’s weaknesses. Their post–De Zerbi evolution has not changed their identity, and they will come for the Reds, as most others have. They press with intelligence, they break lines with purpose, and they commit numbers forward in moments that often punish Liverpool’s ongoing discomfort in defensive transition.

Expect their wide rotations to test Joe Gomez and Milos Kerkez relentlessly. Expect their midfield to swarm Alexis Mac Allister — a former Brighton pillar, now Liverpool’s control mechanism. And expect their forwards to target the spaces behind Konaté and van Dijk, areas that have been too generously available this season.

Set pieces? Brighton will target them with intent from the off. Liverpool has regressed alarmingly in that department, and every top-flight analyst knows it. Much of Brighton’s midweek build-up would have been about how to hurt Arne Slot’s fragile group, which has yet to be righted in this unforgiving season.

Liverpool: Searching for Consistency, Identity, and a Send-Off for Salah

Milan brought something Liverpool had been missing for months: structure with conviction.

Joe Gomez was dependable, whereas Konaté and van Dijk were a figurative wall.

Wirtz created moments with rare calm when he was introduced and surely starts this game.

Ekitike worked tirelessly and he may well start the game as the focal point of the attack.

It was football built on logic, balance, and acceptance of what this team actually is right now — not what it used to be, nor what the money was spent to build.

The question now is whether Slot stays loyal to the newfound formula or disrupts it with unnecessary rotation. Some changes are inevitable given the schedule, but the spine that was delivered in Italy deserves to be preserved.

Concerning Mohamed Salah, Liverpool cannot afford to turn the occasion into an emotional distraction. They need pragmatism, precision, and patience. They need to show the league that they can stitch performances together, not produce isolated bursts of competence.

If Liverpool is to build any run, it starts here. Not next week. Not after AFCON.

Now.

Predicted Liverpool Lineup (4-3-3):

GK – Alisson Becker

RB – Joe Gomez

CB – Ibrahima Konaté

CB – Virgil van Dijk (c)

LB – Milos Kerkez

CM – Dominik Szoboszlai

CM – Alexis Mac Allister

CM – Curtis Jones

ACM – Florian Wirtz

CF – Alexander Isak

CF – Hugo Ekitike

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The Tactical Picture

Brighton will challenge Liverpool’s willingness to repeat what worked in Milan. They will drag, rotate, and overload zones designed to pull Liverpool’s structure apart. Slot’s side must match that aggression, not retreat from it.

This game will not be defined by quality — Liverpool has more of that.

It will be defined by discipline, mentality, and the ability to resist reverting to the disorganised, anxious version of themselves that has cost them so many Premier League points.

If Liverpool wants a run, it begins under these lights. If they want the table to stop mocking them, it begins here. If they want Salah’s final moment to matter, it begins with performance, not nostalgia.

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Player to Watch: Mohamed Salah

If this is his final Anfield appearance, he will know it. The crowd will know it. Brighton will know it.

A farewell is only meaningful if it is decisive and he may not even be in attendance.

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Steven Smith’s Score Prediction:

Liverpool 2 – 1 Brighton