Jurgen Klopp is using the international break as a chance to meet up with his best friend David Wagner and give his non-internationals some more match practice.
Klopp knows the Huddersfield manager from his time in Germany, and loaned our young Welsh keeper David Wagner to him in the summer – taking his advice to sign Leicester’s Ben Chilwell, too (although this didn’t eventually happen).
On Friday, the sides will play a behind closed doors friendly at Melwood, but Liverpool are expected to put out some well known names.
Roberto Firmino and Lucas haven’t been selected by Brazil, Alberto Moreno hasn’t been chosen by Spain, James Milner’s retired for England, Joel Matip isn’t interested in trips to Cameroon for the time being – while Danny Ings and Kevin Stewart will also likely feature against the Championship leaders.
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Wagner is delighted with the friendly, and told the Echo that it benefits his squad.
“We are in a good situation that we only have three players away with their national teams in (keeper) Danny Ward (Wales), Jon Gorenc Stankovic (Slovenia Under 21s) and Mooy).
“All the others are available to work here, but we will be careful about the schedules – we have one group who have played a lot since the start of the season and one who have played less.
“We will find the right course of action for each group and balance training and recovery. The friendly against Liverpool allows some players to get important minutes in their legs.”
While we’re glad some of the fringe players will get a run-out, we’re simply petrified of picking up another pointless injury before a key run of fixtures! International breaks are never kind to us in this regard, but we’ll have nobody to blame but ourselves if it’s our own friendly that causes an issue.