West Ham United vs. Liverpool: Premier League 2025-26 Preview & Team News

| Sunday, November 30th |Premier League | London Stadium2:05PM BST/9:05AM EST

Heaven help me. Well. Here we are. Another Liverpool football game. This one is against West Ham United. I’m not sure what you want me to say here. Please win? Please don’t look like you’ve looked lately? Please may these two-ish hours go by relatively quickly and painlessly?

There’s giving the new players a chance to bed in properly and then there’s whatever the heck is happening here. Liverpool are treading water in 12th place in the league and things are looking pretty grim. The good news, I guess, is that West Ham are in an even worse position than the Reds, so maybe we won’t see another spectacular crash out on Sunday. However, despite their 17th place ranking, they have been on the up, dragging themselves out of the relegation zone with back-to-back victories (wonder what that’s like).

It’s hard to pinpoint what is going wrong with the team, because that would imply that something is going right. If I had to choose one thing, it would be this very data driven and analytical fact: the vibes are, quite simply, off.

At this point in the preview, I would usually talk about Liverpool’s current record, but you already know it, and so for my mental health I’ll leave out the specifics. They’ve lost a lot. Like a lot a lot, and they’ve lost by a lot. It would be one thing if they’ve been falling to well-fought but unfortunate defeats, but that’s not the case. They’ve deserved every loss.

But hey, maybe they’ll start to pull themselves up on Sunday? Maybe the criticism has lit a fire beneath them and some of the world class players on this team will step up to right this ship instead of fading into the background like that Homer Simpson meme.

Predicted Liverpool Lineup (4-3-3)

Alisson; Gomez, Konate, Van Dijk, Robertson; Jones, Gravenberch; Salah, Szoboszlai, Chiesa; Isak

Hugo Ekitike went off injured against PSV midweek, meaning that Alexander Isak will likely start up top. Alisson Becker and Florian Wirtz should probably both be available for Sunday. Our sorry defense will be without Conor Bradley, Jeremie Frimpong, and Giovanni Leoni.

For West Ham, they’ll be without Lukasz Fabianski and Oliver Scarles.

The Managers Have Their Say

Arne Slot: “He’s proven to be a difficult manager to play against, not only for me but for everyone, because he always has a very good game plan. It’s a tough team to beat at the moment, which was different maybe in the beginning of the season. We face them now and that’s why we definitely need to be ready for a challenge because that’s what they will give us. They know, of course, after our recent run of results that it’s probably different for them to play against us now than it was three or four months ago.“

Nuno Espírito Santo: “I don’t know. We can expect anything, especially teams that are in European competitions. Due to the amount of games, we cannot predict the starting XI. No matter who starts, we are going to face a tough XI.”

The Officials

Referee: Darren England Assistant Referee #1: Scott Ledger Assistant Referee #2: Akil Howson Fourth Official: Andrew Kitchen VAR: Paul Tierney VAR Assistant: Nicholas Hopton

If you haven’t done so already, we’d love if you signed up for an SB Nation account and join the community at TLO. We’ll bring you and your fellow Liverpool fans from around the world full coverage of every match from the 2025-26 season in the Premier League, Champions League, and domestic cups along getting you breaking news, insight and opinion, tactical discussion, and post-match reactions as the new season plays out. Hopefully you’ll join us for it!