Match Preview: Liverpool v Brentford | OneFootball

Brentford close their 2025/26 Premier League campaign against Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday afternoon (4pm kick-off BST, live on Sky Sports).

The Bees remain in contention for a European place while Arne Slot's side's Champions League spot will be confirmed should they avoid defeat.

Analysis, team news, match officials and more - here's everything you need to know ahead of the game.

Pre-match analysis

Stephen Gillett, Playmaker Stats: Set-piece battle key

Brentford travel to Anfield for their end-of-season showdown on Sunday looking to do the double over Liverpool for the first time in their history.

The Bees’ only win at one of English football’s most formidable fortresses came all the way back in 1937, when flying winger Bobby Reid bagged a hat-trick in a thrilling 4-3 victory for the Londoners.

Fast forward nearly 90 years, and Keith Andrews’ side will be hellbent on writing another famous chapter in Brentford’s annals.

Still in the hunt for either a Europa League or Europa Conference League spot, the Bees sit ninth in the Premier League table on 52 points - but know only victory over Arne Slot’s Reds will do if they are to qualify for Europe for the first time ever, barring an unlikely goal difference swing involved Brighton & Hove Albion.

Andrews will look to sidestep the final-day mathematical permutations and focus solely on winning. He already knows Brentford’s ‘Class of 25/26’ have what it takes after October’s 3-2 victory over the reigning Premier League champions at the Gtech.

Dango Ouattara, Kevin Schade and Igor Thiago were all on the scoresheet that day, and Andrews will need his attacking unit to be at their clinical best if Brentford are to claim three points on Merseyside.

The west Londoners top the Premier League for shooting accuracy this season, boasting a shot-on-target percentage of 36.8%, while no side has generated more xG per shot than Brentford’s 0.17.

That ruthless edge was evident in last year’s win over against Sunday’s opponents at the Gtech. Despite having just 34% possession, Brentford fired off 17 shots, eight of them on target, and generated more xG than Liverpool, who trailed throughout after Ouattara volleyed the hosts ahead early on.

Ouattara’s goal in the previous meeting - like his equaliser against Crystal Palace last week - stemmed from a Michael Kayode long throw, and any discussion around Liverpool’s strengths and weaknesses this season inevitably leads back to set-pieces.

Despite a raft of high-profile summer signings, Liverpool have endured a difficult title defence, with their shortcomings repeatedly stalling any momentum. Their set-piece record offers perhaps the clearest example.

Although their overall goal output has fallen substantially, Slot’s side still rank joint-second in the Premier League for goals from corners, free-kicks and throws this season, with Virgil van Dijk (six goals) and Dominik Szoboszlai (four) among the division’s most dangerous dead-ball operators.

Despite scoring 18 goals from set-piece situations, excluding penalties, the Reds have a set-piece goal difference of -2, having conceded more goals in this regard than any other side in the Premier League.

Such vulnerabilities are a far cry from the defensive resilience that underpinned Slot’s title-winning debut campaign. Only five teams in the entire top flight have conceded more goals than Liverpool this season (52).

Notably, the Reds have averaged more possession this season (59%) than they did during the previous campaign, and they are likely to dominate the ball again on Sunday.

Brentford’s challenge will be to maximise the possession they do have, continue generating high-quality chances - something the Bees have consistently excelled at - and exploit the weaknesses that have plagued Slot’s Liverpool throughout the campaign.

If the Bees can do that, and enjoy a slice of luck, history could be in the making.

Scout report

Dan Long, Sky Sports: Where Liverpool's title defence fell short

Liverpool rocketed to the top of the table after starting the defence of their second Premier League title with five straight wins, but that did not tell the full story.

Champions always find a way to win, but the Reds rode their luck in those opening weeks. A 100th-minute winner from teenager Rio Ngumoha earned a 3-2 victory over Newcastle, for example, while a 95th-minute Mohamed Salah penalty was all they managed to put past Burnley at Turf Moor.

Then, while their collapse was surprising, it was not entirely unexpected.

A 3-2 defeat to Brentford on 25 October condemned Liverpool to a fourth Premier League defeat in succession for the first time in 11 years. But the slump did not end there.

In fact, between the 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace on 27 September and the 3-3 draw with Leeds on 6 December, Arne Slot’s side picked up just eight points from 10 games.

That night at Elland Road was memorable for more than just the result. After being an unused substitute for the second time in three games, Salah claimed there was no relationship between him and Slot and that he was being ‘thrown under the bus’. He did start the next game against Brighton, however, before jetting to AFCON with Egypt.

The regular defeats stopped after that, but any hope of challenging Arsenal and Manchester City at the top was effectively gone. Four defeats from four to start 2026 made sure of that.

Since then, Liverpool have only been able to string together a run of three league wins on two occasions. A luxury for some teams, granted, but there were four runs of three last season and three runs of four. There is simply no comparison.

A largely miserable season was compounded on 24 March, when Salah announced he would be leaving in the summer, 11 months into the two-year contract extension he signed the previous April. The 33-year-old will depart Anfield as the third-highest scorer in club history, with only Roger Hunt (285) and Ian Rush (346) ahead of him.

Andy Robertson announced in early April that he, too, would be leaving after nine seasons and, to make matters worse, a few days later, Hugo Ekitike ruptured his Achilles in a Champions League game against Paris Saint-Germain. That meant he would miss not only the season’s conclusion, but the World Cup, too.

Liverpool sit in fifth place, the final Champions League place, going into the final day, and need to avoid defeat to 100 per cent confirm their return to Europe’s premier competition for a third season running and the ninth time in the last 10 seasons.

That said, Man City's late equaliser against Bournemouth means that, even if the Reds are defeated this weekend, the sixth-placed Cherries would have have to overturn a six-goal goal difference swing.

In the Dugout

Arne Slot

Arne Slot had a long career in his native Netherlands, which spanned 18 years from 1995 to 2013. He was a goalscoring midfielder – once capped internationally at U19 level - who scored 100 league goals in 462 appearances, over 300 of which came during spells at PEC Zwolle and NAC Breda.

During the three separate periods spent at Zwolle, he won the Eerste Divisie – the Netherlands’ second tier - in 2001/02 and 2011/12.

After retirement, Slot moved into a coaching role within PEC Zwolle's youth academy, before four years at Cambuur, first as assistant to Henk de Jong, Marcel Keizer and then Rob Maas, then as joint head coach with Sipke Hulshoff. The pair guided Cambuur to a third-place finish in the Eerste Divisie in 2016/17, which secured a play-off spot, though they were defeated 3-2 on aggregate by MVV Maastricht.

Slot left Cambuur in the summer of 2017 to take up the assistant role at AZ Alkmaar and he was handed the head coach role two years later. His first and only full season in charge was disrupted by Covid but, when the season was abandoned on 24 April 2020, his side were joint top with Ajax.

He lasted less than eight more months in the role before agreeing a deal to take over at Feyenoord in 2021. It was in Rotterdam that he really started to make a name for himself.

In 2021/22, Feyenoord finished third in the Eredivisie and as UEFA Conference League runners-up. In 2022/23, they won the league for the first time in six years, reached the semi-finals of the KNVB Cup and the quarter-finals of the Europa League. And in 2023/24, they finished as Eredivisie runners-up and won the KNVB Cup.

In all, he won 98 of his 150 games in charge at De Kuip, before being named as Jürgen Klopp’s successor at Liverpool in April 2024. Slot reached a century of games in charge of the Reds in March.

The Gameplan

With Andy Jones, The Athletic

Andy Jones of The Athletic explains how Arne Slot's side are likely to approach Sunday's Brentford clash.

"Liverpool have switched up shapes a little bit this season," he told brentfordfc.com.

"That has been related to personnel, results and performances and trying to change things and tweak things to try and find a solution to the problems they have had.

"It looks like it is back to a more settled 4-2-3-1, which is Arne Slot’s go-to system and the one he has used for most of the time when he has been in charge.

"Curtis Jones could potentially start at right-back, where he has been playing recently. Liverpool have had well-documented issues at right-back in terms of injuries to Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong, which has meant Slot has had to use a midfielder there, which gives it a different look because of the qualities that player might have. Jones is more of a progressive passer, rather than a runner or a ball-carrier.

"In terms of personnel, there are not many options for Slot. The squad at the start of the season was relatively slim and has been made slimmer by injuries, especially serious injuries that have kept people out for months, with Hugo Ekitike the most recent.

"There are fitness doubts about Alexander Isak – will he be available? Salah and Florian Wirtz came back from injury and illness against Aston Villa – how far are they now another week on?

"So, it will be more of a personnel question, but it will be a 4-2-3-1, building up from the back and trying to hurt Brentford that way. Liverpool have had problems this season building out from the back, but also with a lack of creativity and a lack of threat and that has been personified in recent weeks because of the lack of attacking players they have had on the pitch."

Last Premier League starting XI v Aston Villa (4-2-3-1): Mamardashvili; Gomez, Konaté, van Dijk, Kerkez; Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Jones, Szoboszlai, Ngumoha; Gakpo

Team news

Andrews provides positive update

Head coach Keith Andrews revealed what shape his squad is in going into Sunday's game.

"The players are in a good place," said Andrews.

"We’ve had a good couple of weeks. The season is coming to a close.

"Injury-wise it’s the same as last week, in terms of availability."

Full-back Rico Henry will not feature on Merseyside, while Fábio Carvalho and Antoni Milambo remain sidelined due to ACL injuries.

Match Officials

England in charge at Anfield

Referee: Darren England

Assistants: Scott Ledger and Akil Howson

Fourth official: Thomas Kirk

VAR: Tony Harrington

Darren England will be the man in the middle for the final game of Brentford's Premier League campaign.

The Doncaster-born referee has taken charge of 22 fixtures involving the Bees during his career, with two of those coming in 2025/26.

This season, England oversaw a 1-0 loss at home to Manchester City and an FA Cup fourth-round victory against Macclesfield by the same scoreline.

Last meeting

Brentford 3 Liverpool 2, (Premier League, 25 October 2025)

Brentford's front three of Dango Ouattara, Kevin Schade and Igor Thiago all scored as the Bees defeated reigning Premier League champions Liverpool in October.

Ouattara hooked a volley into the back of the net to open the scoring after a Michael Kayode long throw had been flicked on by Kristoffer Ajer, with Schade racing onto a Mikkel Damsgaard through ball to double the lead late in the first half.

Milos Kerkez pulled one back before the break but Thiago restored the two-goal advantage on the hour from the penalty spot after Ouattara was brought down by Virgil van Dijk.

Mohamed Salah struck late on to set up a nervy ending, but the west Londoners saw out the remainder of the game to secure a memorable and deserved win.