Liverpool welcome a struggling Bologna to Anfield on Wednesday night (Oct 2) in the second round of the new Champions League format.
This will be the Reds’ first taste of European football on Merseyside under Arne Slot after a 3-1 win over AC Milan at San Siro, while the Rossoblu are coming off a respectable goalless draw against Shakhtar Donetsk on matchday one.
Victory in Milan marked the start of a four-game winning sequence for Slot’s men, who repeated last year’s 5-1 EFL Cup win over West Ham United last week, as well as Premier League successes against Bournemouth and Wolves.
That sees Liverpool top of the Premier League table thanks to Manchester City dropping points to Newcastle United, setting up a thrilling three-way title fight between Slot’s team, the current champions and Arsenal.
Leaving aside domestic matters, Liverpool have a magnificent continental streak to extend on Wednesday. Jurgen Klopp’s Reds won each of their last 10 European group stage matches at Anfield, scoring at least twice in each of their last nine. Now it is up to Slot to see if he can maintain that run of positive results in Europe.
Darwin Nunez has returned to training after missing Saturday’s 2-1 win at Wolves due to illness. The Uruguayan could be in the starting line-up as Diogo Jota injured his foot at the weekend and was absent from training on Tuesday.
The Liverpool players are put through their paces ahead of Bologna’s Champions League visit to Anfield / video: Matty McClennon
Meanwhile, Bologna have had a frustrating start to their Serie A campaign having recorded just one win in their opening six matches, against Monza, and finding themselves in 13th place.
They failed to hold on to a precious 1-0 lead at home to Atalanta on Saturday, resulting in a 1-1 stalemate. Still, the Italian side has only lost once so far this campaign, against Napoli, but have registered six draws. The atmosphere at Bologna is therefore quite different from the one at Liverpool coming into this game.
The visitors have lost important players Joshua Zirkzee and Riccardo Calafiori to Premier League teams Man Utd and Arsenal in the summer and are struggling to regain the kind of form that saw them finish fifth in Serie A last season.
This year sees Bologna return to European competition 22 years after an Intertoto Cup final lost to Fulham.
Kick-off at Anfield is 8pm (BST).
 in the second round of the new Champions League format.){kind=link}