Villa Park feels like another reckoning

Aston Villa vs Liverpool | Premier League Preview

Liverpool are awful, as I seem to write every week, and Villa Park feels like an opportunity for another inspection of the wreckage.

The away form has been wretched, the midfield too easily passed through, the defence too often stretched into panic, and the attack reduced to fragments of individual hope.

Villa have their own concerns, a European final looming and legs to protect, but they remain coherent in a way Liverpool rarely do. They know their patterns, their runs, their route to goal. Liverpool too often look like a side waiting for matches to explain themselves.

The return of Salah for minutes would be welcome, more for sentiment than salvation. Alisson may not be risked, Wirtz has been ill, Isak is only just back, and the options feel stitched together rather than selected with conviction.

There is a version of Liverpool that can hurt Villa, especially if Rio Ngumoha runs at tired minds. But that version has appeared too rarely, and never for long enough.

Predicted Liverpool XI: Mamardashvili, Jones, Konate, Van Dijk, Kerkez, Gravenberch, Mac Allister, Szoboszlai, Frimpong, Ngumoha, Gakpo

Villa to win this 2-0 I think, and Liverpool to leave us asking the same tired question again, what exactly are they trying to be?