They will also miss cup games (hopefully) and will need some rest afterwards. But we should be able to manage with what we have.
There will be no rest. As soon as their countries are out of the tournament, they'll be on the first plane back to Liverpool, to play in our next game. As happened in 2017. Back then, they missed 2 LC semis, 3 FA Cup games, and 2 league games. We took 3 points in January from 4 games. We lost 3 home games on the bounce. Our season collapsed from a title challenge and two cup runs, into the usual top 4 bunfight.
It's not the old days of the transfer window, and the squad list outlined in the first post, is not set in stone. A number of players in it will be somewhere else after the transfer window. That's the thing about pre season. While the established first team players get ready to face the season ahead, other players get ready to get away. There's no future for Karius and Woodburn and Shaq here, so they'll be off. Davies and Phillips will probably be gone. We'll take any takers for Minamino and Origi.
All the heavies will be back for the start of the season. At the back, Allison can't be making mistakes and throwing away more games such as against City and Leicester, or his automatic starting place can't be guaranteed. I would go with VVD and Konate as the first choice centre back partnership. Matip is too injury prone to be considered first choice, and I don't think we paid 40m for Konate to sit on the bench. The rest of the team picks itself.
20 BBC pundits gave their predictions for the season. All 20 said we won't win the league, 1 said that we wouldn't make the top 4. So the scale of the task is clear. Despite winning it recently, and going into the season with 8 wins in our last 10 games, everyone has already written us off. Time to prove them all wrong so.
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