Cody Gakpo Drops Early Liverpool Selection Hint Ahead Of Aston Villa Tie
Cody Gakpo will be eyeing up another Liverpool start for this evening's Premier League game against Aston Villa at Anfield.
The 25-year-old is in fine form as he netted his sixth goal of the season in the 4-0 thrashing of Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League.
The win lifted the Reds to the summit of the league table, maintaining their 100% record in the competition.
Liverpool will also be hoping to enter the November international break on a high by securing victory over Villa and extending their lead at the top of the Premier League standings.
Arne Slot's side have 25 points, two points above defending champions Manchester City and seven adrift of Arsenal who face Chelsea on Sunday.
Liverpool currently boast of four attackers with Diogo Jota and Federico Chiesa still injured.
To reduce the workload on these forwards, Slot left out Darwin Nunez from his starting XI and deployed Mohamed Salah, Gakpo, and Luis Diaz as his front three.
"I only have four attackers available with injuries to Chiesa and Jota," Slot said.
"Darwin, with this fixture list, impossible to play them all. [Jonathan] Tah is one of best defenders in Germany and likes to play against target man, so we played Lucho [Diaz] there.
"If we have injuries like we have at the moment then we can play Lucho as a nine again. Last season more Cody as a nine, and Lucho as 11, so that's also an option."
Slot will have to make yet another major decision between Gakpo and Diaz with both deserving to play following their performances in midweek
Gakpo has already hinted he could start tonight's game by posting on his Instagram story promoting the Villa game.
LFC Transfer Room Football Correspondent. Covered the fortunes of Liverpool for the past three years. Follow Joseph on X (formerly Twitter) @joseph_agbobli