Bournemouth (Anfield) - Match Preview & Discussion Thread (August 19)

The Reds welcome Bournemouth for their first home game of the season on Saturday

Match Preview and Metrics

Officials Preview (PT)

Before Gary gets on with the actual football preview (and you all join in with the pre-match debate), the choice of officials surely overshadows this one already.

Before the first game of the season I noted how Manchester/northwest officials (ref or VAR) have done more than half of Liverpool’s games in the Jürgen Klopp era, and so far it’s 100% this season.

My claim that Paul Tierney should not be anywhere near a Liverpool game, and how Manchester and northwest officials are objectively terrible for Liverpool compared to other top teams (see the data), it's good to see the officials for this one. (🤦‍♂️)

See the article below for the objective data:

So, for Bournemouth it’s:

Referee: Thomas Bramall. (Sheffield, never done a Big Six team before, barely done any top-level officiating, but at least it’s a fresh face.)

Fourth official: Anthony Taylor (Greater Manchester, seems to be involved some way in most Liverpool games).

VAR: Paul Tierney (Greater Manchester, seems to be involved some way in most Liverpool games).

Assistant VAR: Constantine Hatzidakis (elbowed Andy Robertson as Tierney's assistant at the end of last season).

Tierney’s record is so especially egregious that to put him as the VAR with his mate who elbowed Robertson is almost beyond a joke at this point.

I continue to ask simply that Liverpool be reffed like other teams, as outlined in full in the article above. But from that, here are the Manchester VAR objective decisions involving Liverpool games, followed by the number of home refs/VARs:

Then, penalties and northwest refs. (See the article for the difference between northwest refs and rest-of-England refs.)

Finally, why is Paul Tierney, who clearly hates Klopp, given so many Liverpool games, especially as the VAR? It’s not like he lives near London.

Anyway, hopefully the officials won’t play a major role in the outcome, in contrast to the unbelievable decision at Old Trafford the other night. But with Jon Moss and Martin Atkinson (bar Tierney, the two worst refs for Liverpool, objectively speaking, in the Klopp era) now key at the PGMOL, what did I expect?

Right, onto the football…

Match Preview

Liverpool’s first competitive home game of the season is the visit of Andoni Iraola’s Bournemouth on Saturday afternoon. The Reds recorded a 9-0 win in the corresponding fixture last season and have won eight and drawn one of the previous nine meetings with the Cherries at Anfield.