CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE LIVE MATCH

Even with a victory over Brighton this weekend, the Reds would still fall behind Brighton in the standings, demonstrating the campaign's poor start for the championship contenders.

Although their forthcoming encounter against Brighton will be their first domestic contest in four weeks owing to a combination of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the previous international break, Liverpool has only won two of their six league games thus far.

Even though both teams had opportunities to win the Merseyside derby, Jurgen Klopp's squad fell short against Everton in a 0-0 draw at Goodison Park. Jordan Pickford did an outstanding job stopping players like Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah, though.

However, the Reds did manage to win their most recent game, defeating Ajax 2-1 thanks to Joel Matip's 89th-minute header in the Champions League. Those additional two points might be very important in enabling them advance to the knockout round after they were destroyed 4-1 by Napoli in their initial group encounter.

But now that it has been so long since they have seen their club play, Anfield is sure to be energized and they must put their focus back to improving their league record and position. Klopp will be well aware of the potential minefield confronting his squad, especially with a new manager in the opposition dugout, having drawn with Brighton at home last season.

Almost four weeks have passed since Brighton's last Premier League match, and Graham Potter's final match in command of the club before moving to Chelsea was a resounding 5-2 victory over Leicester City.

After Kelechi Iheanacho scored in the opening minute, and Patson Daka leveled the score to make it 2-2 at the interval, the Seagulls shown outstanding resiliency to come from behind.

As he has been for much of the season since switching to a deeper midfield position, Alexis Mac Allister was in terrific form on this particular day. He completed his performance by scoring from the penalty spot and then curling a beautiful free kick beyond Danny Ward's grasp. The Argentine international's powerful drive from the edge of the box was disallowed for a close offside ruling, preventing him from scoring a hat-trick.

It will be interesting to see how fast and drastically De Zerbi attempts to alter what had become a winning formula under Potter, who led his team to 13 points after its first six games of the season.

The Italian gained notoriety for playing with a very aggressive approach when managing Sassuolo in Serie A, but he is unlikely to adopt the same approach right away considering that a trip to Anfield will be one of the most difficult managerial debuts a manager could endure.