Liverpool vs Brentford prediction, odds, expert football betting tips and best bets for Premier League match – Sporting News
Back to winning ways after the damaging defeat to Arsenal, Liverpool hope to keep themselves atop the Premier League table as they travel to take on Brentford on Saturday.
The Reds do not have control of the title race at the moment, with Man City two points back and holding a game in hand, but they can keep the pressure on Pep Guardiola’s side with victory at Gtech in their early kickoff.
Liverpool bounced back from the Arsenal defeat with a 3-1 win over Burnley last time out, and now see Mohamed Salah return from his hamstring injury suffered while on AFCON duty with Egypt. Salah may be brought right back into the starting lineup, but more than likely he will come off the bench as he eases back into play.
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Brentford sit 14th in the Premier League table and downed Wolves in their last match, securing a clean sheet for the first time in any competition since late October in a 2-0 victory over Chelsea. They remain leaky at the back, but that result will give hope for defensive improvement moving forward.
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With or without Mo Salah, this Liverpool side is just too powerful and in-form up front to be stopped by Brentford’s leaky back line, and one clean sheet over a struggling Wolves side isn’t enough to prove they’re on the up in that regard.
Liverpool put up 17 shots worth 1.71 xG the last time these two teams faced, and the Bees aren’t any better at home than on the road — in fact, from a defensive perspective, it’s been worse at home — failing to convince this reverse fixture will go any better.
The Reds are in solid attacking form, and while their last two road trips have seen limited goal scoring production, it’s only three weeks ago that they put up four at Bournemouth, and a month ago they bagged two on the road at Arsenal in the FA Cup.
If Mohamed Salah comes on for the final half-hour, it could increase the chances of this even further — it wasn’t long ago that Kevin de Bruyne returned from a months-long injury to score a goal and assist another in 20 minutes against Newcastle.
Yet even without the Egyptian, this Liverpool side hasn’t missed a beat up front, as Darwin Nunez and Diogo Jota are in exceptional form.
One of Liverpool’s most electric forward this season has been Diogo Jota, with the Portuguese international’s consistency one of the many bright spots in attack for Jurgen Klopp.
He’s a solid choice at even-money to find the net, with four goals in his last four league games, and six in his last eight. He’s finishing at an over-performance level this year, with his nine league goals nearly 3.5 more than his xG, so he can create something from nothing if needed. And incredibly, he doesn’t have a single assist from Mohamed Salah this season, meaning he is Salah-proof if the Egyptian doesn’t return here, or doesn’t start.
Jota’s a late-game specialist, with 10 of his 14 goals this year across all competitions coming after halftime, and eight of them after the 70th minute, but his +350 last goal scorer odds just don’t present strong enough value to back such a fluke-prone selection.
This match with an early Saturday kickoff will be broadcast in the United States by NBC on USA Network, which is available to stream on Fubo, as well as on Peacock for those with a current subscription.
A Spanish-language broadcast is available in the U.S. as well on both Telemundo and Universo, which are both also available on Fubo.
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Fubo Canada is the official Premier League rights-holder in Canada, streaming every single match across the entire 2023/24 season.
In the UK, the match will be broadcast on TNT Sports 1, with streaming available on discovery+ as well.
Kyle Bonn is a soccer content producer for The Sporting News.
