When will Liverpool play Chelsea in Carabao Cup as fourth-round draw throws up familiar pairing | OneFootball

Liverpool will host Chelsea in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup, having knocked out another London opponent in Tottenham Hotspur earlier this week.

The Reds passed their first domestic cup assignment of the season to earn a tie against Xabi Alonso’s Blues in what’ll be the Spaniard’s third year in a row visiting Anfield as the away team’s manager with a third different club (after Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid).

Those two Champions League games took place in early November, and our former midfielder’s latest visit to L4 is set to land just before Halloween this time around.

When will Liverpool play Chelsea in Carabao Cup?

The EFL confirmed the Carabao Cup fourth-round draw on their official website, with the eight ties to take place in the week commencing Monday 26 October.

For the second consecutive round, both Merseyside teams are drawn at home, with Everton hosting Newcastle (a fixture which’ll be reversed in the Premier League the following Monday), so those two games will have to be played on separate nights for logistical reasons.

(Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)

With Liverpool playing on successive Sundays in the top flight either side of the Carabao Cup fixture (Brighton on 25 October, Arsenal on 1 November), the likeliest date for the Chelsea game would seem to be Wednesday 28 October.

As deduced by @ZAGKAG1811 on X, the Everton-Newcastle game seems the most likely to be held over to Thursday 29th, seeing as they play each other in the league the following Monday and would therefore have the most scope to play in the latest possible midweek slot.

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Liverpool will have a very busy autumn

The Reds will now play nine matches in 29 days after the upcoming international window in what’s sure to be a stern test of the depth and quality of Andoni Iraola’s squad. Similar to this past week, they’ll play three times at Anfield in quick succession either side of Halloween.

*Likely dates, to be confirmed in due course

Liverpool and Chelsea are familiar foes in the Carabao Cup – this’ll be their third meeting in the competition in six seasons (after the finals of 2022 and 2024), their fourth in the past decade, and their 10th in the tournament since the start of the 21st century (Transfermarkt).

If Iraola can get the better of Alonso in the final week of October, it’d leave LFC just two steps away from yet another visit to Wembley in the spring, and the opportunity of a first major trophy for the Basque would very much open up.

It’d also be a chance for him to vindicate FSG’s decision to hire him rather than the former Reds midfielder, who’d been heavily linked with the Liverpool post earlier this year.