Your morning Liverpool digest on Sunday, May 28.
Anfield Road redevelopment takes next step
Less than a week on from hosting its final game of the season, the Anfield pitch was playing host to heavy plant machinery instead of Premier League footballers.
Liverpool are approaching the final stages of the £80m redevelopment of the Anfield Road End, with the end of the 2022/23 campaign bringing about the next major milestone in the project; the removal of the old roof.
Construction continues throughout the summer and the Reds have requested that their first game of next season be played away from home to allow adequate time for the redevelopment to be totally finished.
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Earlier this week several large cranes pitched up inside the stadium in readiness for roof removal, with a four-week window in place following the Aston Villa game last weekend for the work to take place.
Liverpool attacker fighting for Anfield future
When Liverpool last travelled to Southampton, 12 months ago, the 2-1 victory at St. Mary’s, coming days after the FA Cup final victory over Chelsea, marked the first time that Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott started a Premier League match together in midfield.
Since then, the pair have started just one more top-flight match together in the Reds’ engine room, yet both have made great strides during what has admittedly been a disappointing season for the club.
Up until the 0-0 draw away at Chelsea last month, Elliott had been involved in every Liverpool match this season. Even now, after a further five unused outings, only Mohamed Salah, Fabinho, Alisson, and Trent Alexander-Arnold can better his total of 45 appearances this campaign.
Meanwhile, Jones has been a standout performer for the Reds, alongside Alexander-Arnold, since Jurgen Klopp introduced an inverted full-back system last month. In a year wrecked by injury for the majority, the 22-year-old came into the starting XI in the absence of Elliott against Chelsea and hasn’t looked back since.
Admittedly a season of transition perhaps suggests that Liverpool’s ongoing transformation won’t be as slight as Klopp would have liked. But while Jones and Elliott continue to flourish because of their opportunities, it has been a different story for Fabio Carvalho.
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