Liverpool fans can now start putting dates in the diary for the next 11 months, with the Premier League fixtures for the 2023/24 season being announced on Thursday morning.
Jurgen Klopp’s side will be away for their opening match for the third year in succession, following a request by the club not to begin the campaign at home due to ongoing redevelopment work at Anfield (BBC Sport).
A hectic December sees the Reds down to play seven matches in 29 days, with a Europa League fixture and potential Carabao Cup quarter-final also taking place that month, which’ll make us quite grateful for the mid-season break during January.
Here are 10 standout dates to which Liverpool fans’ eyes will be drawn after the fixtures announcement this morning:
13 August – Chelsea (A)
For the first time in five years, Liverpool won’t start their Premier League campaign against the previous season’s Championship winners. In fact, we’re facing one of only five other teams to have been ever-present in the top flight since its rebranding in 1992.
Chelsea may have had a horrendous season as they limped to a 12th-place finish, but with Mauricio Pochettino now in charge, the Blues could be a much stronger proposition this time around, particularly if they continue their vast spending under Todd Boehly.
Encouragingly, the Reds haven’t lost any of their last five league visits to Stamford Bridge and have been beaten just once in top-flight action in SW6 since the end of 2013.
26 August – Newcastle (A)
Another potentially fiendish away trip comes up later in August as Liverpool travel to a Newcastle side who’ll probably still be buoyant from returning to the Champions League after a 20-year absence.
Our 2-0 win at St James’ Park in February was one of our best results of last season, and Eddie Howe’s team will be eager to get one over on us after two defeats to the Reds in 2022/23.
A third successive victory on Tyneside could lay down an early marker against a team with whom we could be battling for a Champions League place.
25 November – Man City (A)
It mightn’t have been the case when we visited the Etihad Stadium in April, but Manchester City v Liverpool has often been a potentially crucial game in the Premier League title race in recent years.
Reds fans will be hoping that, by the time Klopp’s team visit the champions towards the end of November, we’ll again view them as genuine title rivals, rather than a speck in the distance like last season.
Our most recent league win at the Etihad was all the way back in 2015; we’re due three points there by now!
17 December – Man United (H)
Manchester United visiting Anfield in the run-up to Christmas brings back happy memories of 2018, when Xherdan Shaqiri’s double fired us to a 3-1 win and fired Jose Mourinho out of a job at Old Trafford.
More recently, this fixture evokes gleeful recollections of the 7-0 romp against the Red Devils in March, a scoreline we shouldn’t expected to see repeated any time soon.
We haven’t lost at home to the Mancs since January 2016, and if we can claim victory against them on our own turf once more, the mood in the Kop will be all the more festive in mid-December!
26 December – Burnley (A)
Boxing Day is a date that many football fans in England anticipate eagerly, although the festive fixture for Liverpool is one which looks fraught with danger.
A visit to Turf Moor is traditionally a game that away fans view as one to simply get out of town with a result, and if the current Burnley crop can pick up where they left off in romping to the Championship title this year, the Reds will be in for a tough afternoon in Lancashire.
It also brings us up against Vincent Kompany for the first time since his thunderbolt against Leicester in 2019 went a long way to killing our Premier League title dreams – assuming, of course, he’s still the Clarets’ manager by then.
3 February – Arsenal (H)
Plenty of Arsenal’s visits to Anfield over the past decade have seen the Gunners obliterated, although when they last came to town in April, we needed a late Bobby Firmino equaliser to salvage a point, having earlier been 2-0 down.
Whether Mikel Arteta’s team can rouse a title challenge again for the 2023/24 season remains to be seen, but right now this looks like one of the trickier assignments for Liverpool, even though they haven’t lost at home to the north Londoners in the league in 11 years.
It’s also very likely that Mo Salah will miss the game due to Egypt’s participation in the Africa Cup of Nations, with the quarter-finals of the tournament likely to take place on that particular weekend.
Only early elimination for the Pharaohs will see him back in England by then, and even in that instance he mightn’t be thrown straight into the fray.
9 March – Man City (H)
A potential title decider? Liverpool fans will be hoping so, even if this fixture didn’t fit that particular billing last season.
If the Reds can get back to somewhere near their 2018-2022 peak, though, the visit of Pep Guardiola’s side to Anfield next spring will be a mouth-watering clash.
A repeat of the result from City’s last visit to the venue – the 1-0 defeat in October when Salah left Joao Cancelo bamboozled and duly fired the winning goal past Ederson – would do very nicely!
16 March – Everton (A)
A week after the champions visit Anfield, Liverpool will be playing in what could be Goodison Park’s last-ever Merseyside derby, should Everton’s new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium be ready in time for the 2024/25 season (or opens in the early weeks of that campaign).
We’ve had some happy visits to the other side of Stanley Park in recent years, having not lost there since 2010, although nine of the Reds’ last 11 away derbies have been drawn, and we were ultimately glad of the point there last term after Conor Coady’s goal was ruled out by VAR.
The trip to the Toffees could also come just days after a Europa League round of 16 clash should Klopp’s team make it that far in the competition, so mid-March may be a truly crunch period in our season.
6 April – Man United (A)
By the time April rolls around, teams will know their objectives for the final few weeks of the campaign. For both of these sides, they’ll be hoping they might still be genuine title contenders then.
Liverpool lost at Old Trafford on their previous visit last August, so revenge will be on our minds, as if any additional motivation is needed for a trip to our arch-rivals.
A win here could give our ambitions a massive boost or dent United’s significantly, possibly even both at once depending on the two teams’ standing in the table by the first weekend of April.
19 May – Wolves (H)
For the third time in six years, Liverpool end their Premier League season with a game against Wolves at Anfield.
On the last two occasions that it happened, the Reds went into the match with hopes of winning the title, only for victory to be in vain as we came up one point short against eventual champions Man City.
We may or may not be in the same scenario in 11 months’ time, but history suggests that when the Old Gold come to town on the final day, their hosts are still dreaming of having a trophy to lift shortly after full-time. Will the outcome next May be different to the near-misses of 2019 and 2022?