Liverpool v PSV: Team news, line-ups and updates in Champions League encounter

Liverpool XI: Mamardashvili, Van Dijk, Konate, Kerkez, Szoboszlai, Mac Allister, Salah, Jones, Gakpo, Ekitike, Gravenberch.

PSV XI: Kovar, Dest, Scouten, Yarek, Salah-Eddine, Mauro Jr, Saibari, Veerman, Man, Til, Perisic

It’s been a worrying campaign so far for Liverpool on all fronts but in the Champions League things have been marginally better, with three wins from four matches.

A win tonight would take them back into the top eight and restore some confidence after that damaging defeat at the weekend.

The 2025/26 Champions League is well underway as 36 teams battle for qualification to the knockout rounds.

The tournament’s modern format sees each club play eight fixtures – against two clubs from each of the four pots in the draw. The Premier League has six teams in the Champions League this season: Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham, Newcastle and Chelsea.

The top eight sides will advance automatically to the round of 16, while the teams who finish between ninth and 24th in the table will advance to a play-off round, played out over two legs.

Find the full standings here:

It was a historic double for the Dutch manager and captain. Not retaining the Eredivisie, though PSV Eindhoven did with Peter Bosz in the dugout and Luuk de Jong wearing the armband. But across the Noordzee, as Arne Slot and Virgil van Dijk became the first head coach and skipper respectively from the Netherlands to win the English title.

As clubs from the same country cannot face each other in the Champions League’s group phase and as Ajax are headed for elimination, Liverpoolagainst PSV could be the closest thing to a Dutch derby in the premier European competition this season. Liverpool have already made a slice of Dutch history in Europe this season: against Atletico Madrid, they became the first non-Dutch club to field four Dutch starters and, fittingly, one of them, Van Dijk, scored the injury-time winner. Slot tried sending out the same quartet of Jeremie Frimpong, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo and his captain against Galatasaray, with rather less success: Liverpool lost 1-0.

Arne Slot had this to say on TNT Sports before the game: “Alex [Isak] in the last four weeks played 30 minutes and then with us he played 70 minutes in a game that wasn’t so intense because we dominated ball possession, but it wasn’t easy for him to manage himself through that 70 minutes.

“If you have another No 9 who is also very good, it makes sense to play the other one and that’s Hugo [Ekitike] tonight.”

Both teams have scored in each of PSV’s last 10 UEFA Champions League games (22F, 23A), with only Lazio (17 between 2007 and 2023) and Real Madrid (11 between 2012 and 2013, and 2016 and 2017) having longer streaks of both scoring and conceding in the competition.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot has only won one of his last eight games against PSV in all competitions (D3 L4), and against no side has he suffered more defeats in his managerial career (4 – level with FC Twente and Vitesse).

These two sides have met seven times in the past in the European Cup, with Liverpool winning five, PSV winning one and the other one ending as a draw.

The most recent meeting came last season in the league phase, when an already qualified Liverpool lost 3-2 on the final matchday in Eindhoven.

Liverpool have won each of their last 13 UEFA Champions League home games in the group stage/league phase, beating Real Madrid 1-0 on MD4 to set the outright longest such run by a Premier League side. The Reds have actually only lost once at Anfield across their last 25 group matches in this competition, 2-0 vs Atalanta in November 2020 (W21 D3).

It was the second consecutive game Liverpool had lost by that margin – the first time that’s happened since April 1965 – with the defensive vulnerability of Slot’s side glaring for all to see.