Old friends and new foes await Reds next season
Liverpool will discover their Premier League fixture list for 2017-18 on Wednesday, but already know they can look forward to meeting old friends and new teams from August.
The promotion back to the top flight of Brighton and Hove Albion and Huddersfield Town means first league meetings with the two sides for the Reds since 1983 and 1972 respectively.
Newcastle United, meanwhile, represent much more familiar foes after just a single year down in the Championship and especially given the incumbent manager – one Rafael Benitez – held the reins at Anfield for six years.
Here is the lowdown on the newly-promoted teams…
Newcastle
It is little over a year since Liverpool last met the Magpies, a 2-2 draw on Merseyside in April 2016 that did not ultimately prove helpful in the visitors’ battle to avoid relegation.
The north east outfit tumbled out of the top tier in 18th place that season, two points short of survival behind rivals Sunderland.
But Benitez committed himself to the cause of returning Newcastle to the Premier League and promptly guided them to the Championship title last term, a point ahead of Brighton after 46 testing games.
Dwight Gayle was their talisman up front, notching 23 goals in the league to help make Benitez’s charges the joint-highest scorers in a keenly-fought division.
The presence of the Magpies in the league means Reds fans will still be travelling to the north east during the season, after Middlesbrough and Sunderland both slipped out of the division in 2016-17.
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Brighton
Brighton were the first team to secure promotion to the Premier League despite ultimately having to settle for runners-up spot behind Newcastle when the regular campaign ended in May.
Their run of form throughout the season earned a return to the top flight of English football for the first time in 34 years, with Chris Hughton the managerial mastermind behind their promotion.
Liverpool have not faced Brighton in a league fixture since March 1983, when the teams played out a 2-2 draw, though they have met on six occasions since then in FA Cup and League Cup ties.
The Seagulls’ elevation to the top flight further increases the number of trips to the south coast for the team and supporters, of course, alongside journeys to Bournemouth and Southampton.
Huddersfield
The play-off victors were indebted to the heroics of a Liverpool goalkeeper during the nail-biting end-of-season showdowns to decide the final promotion place.
David Wagner’s side finished fifth in the Championship and were then paired with Sheffield Wednesday in the semi-finals, initially drawing 0-0 in the opening leg.
A 1-1 stalemate followed in the return meeting, before on-loan Reds stopper Danny Ward kept out two penalties in the shootout to send Town to Wembley and set up a meeting with Reading.
There, nothing could separate the sides across 120 hugely tense – and goalless – minutes and the Wales international was pivotal once more, thwarting a spot-kick en route to Huddersfield winning another battle from 12 yards.
The links to Liverpool go beyond Ward, of course.
Jürgen Klopp and Wagner are close friends, former teammates at Mainz in the 1990s, and colleagues at Borussia Dortmund, and the two men made the switch to English football at a similar time.
“Do it my friend!” said Klopp before the play-offs got under way and the German will surely relish pitting his managerial wits against his compatriot next season.
They did so twice on friendly terms in the past year; the Reds claimed a 2-0 win in pre-season before the Terriers defeated their hosts in a behind-closed-doors practice match a month into the campaign.