Haaland's perfect Manchester City head to injury-hit Liverpool at Anfield with Foden banned
The fixture the weekend has been built around arrives at Anfield on Sunday at 4.30pm, live on Sky Sports Premier League: Manchester City, with a perfect five wins from five in the league, travel to face a Liverpool side that remains unbeaten but has drawn three of its five matches so far (form DDWDW against City's WWWWW).
City arrive with an otherwise clean bill of health — no players injured — and with Erling Haaland, their leading scorer on five goals, in ominously good form. But Phil Foden misses out as he serves the final match of a three-game suspension, and Jérémy Doku and Nico O'Reilly are both doubts. Rayan Aït-Nouri, Abdukodir Khusanov and Rico Lewis are among the defensive options available on the bench.
Liverpool's problems, by contrast, are concentrated in attack. Alexander Isak, their leading scorer on four goals, is out with a thigh injury, joining Cody Gakpo (ankle), Hugo Ekitiké (achilles — sidelined until December), Conor Bradley (knee), Giovanni Leoni (knee, until 18 October) and Wataru Endo (ankle) in the treatment room. Federico Chiesa is also a doubt with a back problem. Giorgi Mamardashvili, Jeremie Frimpong, Joe Gomez, Kostas Tsimikas and Ryan Gravenberch provide the cover on the substitutes' bench.
Friday's previews had billed the meeting as the weekend's headline game, with BBC Sport and FotMob both noting that it will be played under the shadow of City's financial-rule case. The same round-ups reported that Opta's model favours Arsenal and Manchester United in Saturday's fixtures, with Chris Sutton predicting a 2-0 Arsenal win over unbeaten Leeds after their defeat by Brighton — one of several Saturday games on which Sutton, Starsailor singer James Walsh and AI prediction models disagreed.
Discipline could play its part, too: referee Chris Kavanagh has shown 15 yellow cards and one red in three matches this season, an average of 5.33 cards a game — evidence, perhaps, that a spiky afternoon is in store on Merseyside.