Wolves v Liverpool: Premier League – live!

36 min: Minamino has started brightly, his exploits including one implausible spin on halfway that may or may not have been the result of a miscontrol.

Big call! From Krish and from Wilson.

33 min: Yep, it’s the end of Mane. On comes Minamino. I’m sure we will find out what the issue was there soon enough. Mane made his own “substitute me” sign; hopefully it is more precautionary than anything.

32 min: Neto twists into left-sided space but Gomez heads his cross away. It looks as if Mane is injured and may have to come off … he’s gone down …

30 min: The game has definitely tightened up a bit, but Wolves have done really well not to let that early goal get to them and at this point it’s still hard to pick a winner. OK, it’s probably going to be Liverpool. But still, there are two very good sides out here.

28 min: I guess this is, at last, what we in the MBM trade might call “a lull”.

26 min: Neves gets up gingerly, he should be OK.

“How could he miss?” laments Mary Waltz of Doherty. “Teams playing Liverpool know they might only get one or two chances to score. This adds to the pressure. He would have scored against any other team.”

24 min: A snappy midfield spell now, with challenges won and balls turned over by both sides. Neves goes down under one of the former, a fair one from Mane I think, and will need treatment …

21 min: Dendoncker makes a vital challenge to stop Mane running through onto an Oxlade-Chamberlain ball. Cracking game this, so far.

20 min: Traore bounces four of five Liverpool players off him in midfield and works space; it’s a quite awesome display of strength and soloism. Then he goes and spoils it all with a wayward pass!

18 min: Liverpool break, though, and Salah works a good shooting chance inside the box only for Jonny to block heroically.

17 min: Now Traore beats Robertson on the other side and, from his centre, Van Dijk has to chaperone Jimenez carefully away from goal.

16 min: Apart from the goal (I know, I know) Wolves will be very happy with this start.

14 min: More jitters from Liverpool as another free-kick is aimed at Doherty, who can’t win a header this time but watches as the ball loops up and Allison jumps to claim under a challenge. He totally misses it first time around and is lucky to grab it after it bounces.

13 min: That miss gets worse and worse every time you see it. Doherty had the entire box to himself! A sign, though, that Liverpool’s back line might not be in full working order tonight?

11 min: Traore, on the left, goes outside Alexander-Arnold and now wins Wolves a corner. Encouraging sign for him, winning that particular one-on-one. The corner is played short, chipped over from deep … and what a miss from Doherty! Liverpool push up for offside but, on the far side of the box, Doherty has timed his run perfectly. The away defence has got it wrong and he’s all alone, but heads across goal and wide!

9 min: We had a totally unnecessary VAR check for that, delaying the restart and the full celebration. Why? Because football has been taken over by appalling pedants, spoilt brats and questionable agendas.

Nobody’s stopping them, are they? Alexander-Arnold whips over the corner he won, bending it the the edge of the six-yard box via that almost 90-degree run-up. Henderson charges onto it and, probably with his shoulder as it turns out, converts!

7 min: An end-to-end start, and Liverpool now win a free-kick in excellent shooting range just outside the box and to the right of the D. It is taking a *long* time to set up but here’s Alexander-Arnold … whose effort clips the wall, Saiss I think, and goes out for a corner.

5 min: … And it causes no little consternation! Moutinho whips a devilish low ball across and it evades everyone inside the six-yard box before being smuggled away. That was begging to be converted!

4 min: Michael Oliver waves play on after Gomez seems to foul Traore, and Neto can’t take advantage of the … err … advantage, undercooking a centre from the left. But now Wolves do win themselves a free-kick just outside that left edge …

2 min: Liverpool control the ball early on, Alexander-Arnold starting an attack with a switch to Robertson. Ultimately, though, a long pass sails over the byline.

The teams are walking out on a fizzing, crackling, see-your-breath night at Molineux.

I have a feeling … just a feeling … Wolves are going to give Liverpool a proper examination tonight. We could be in for something here. Even if that something is not, in any eventuality, a title race.

“There’s always one huge question to be asked when Wolves play. Not formation or strategy per se but is Robert Plant in the building?” asks Jason Graff.

Excellent question. I certainly saw he was at one of their games pre-Christmas.

Gary Byrne ponders: “Will Nuno Espírito Santo seek to be a Portuguese man o’ war tonight, or turn to jelly against the might of Liverpool?”

That is much closer to the level I’m at tonight.

Evan writes on the ol’ Twitter:

“As a Reds supporter who has never seen Liverpool win the league since I’ve been alive, I’m hoping this will really do it. I don’t see them dropping points to many other teams this season. I also do really enjoy these late games, great viewing time in the US, the game goes great for lunchtime viewing.”

Hope you enjoy it! 8pm is definitely better than the new-fangled 8.15pm for most of us over here so everyone seems to be a winner.

Graeme Thorn has a correction with a caveat:

“Rather than mixing Latin with Portugese, D. Cameron should have
written: ‘Em nome do Pai, do Filho e do Nuno Espírito Santo’, though I
had to trust Google Translate for that.”

It’s been too long a day for this.

Willy Boly, who has been out since October, and Diogo Jota (just the three weeks out) are back on the bench for Wolves tonight. They’re amassing some decent depth. Good to see those two on the scene again, they’d usually be nailed-on starters for Nuno.

“Thoughts and prayers with Wolves tonight: ‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Nuno Espirito Santo (Amen)‘”, intones D Cameron.

Any more invocations, musings, jokes, score predictions, tell-alls … send them my way!

Not going too well for Liverpool’s old chums, and most recent opponents, Manchester United. John Brewin’s excellent piece hits on a particularly hot topic:

Wolves: Rui Patricio, Dendoncker, Coady, Saiss, Doherty, Joao Moutinho, Neves, Jonny, Pedro Neto, Jimenez, Traore. Subs: Boly, Gibbs-White, Jota, Ruddy, Giles, Kilman, Ashley-Seal.

Liverpool: Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, van Dijk, Robertson, Oxlade Chamberlain, Henderson, Wijnaldum, Salah, Firmino, Mane. Subs: Fabinho, Adrian, Minamino, Origi, Matip, Jones, Williams.

Referee: Michael Oliver

Is this the night? Could it be? Are we going to be asking this question every five or six days until May?

Probably not; probably not; probably. But you’d sense this might be one of Liverpool’s closer calls on their inexorable march to Premier League domination and that Wolves, flagging a touch but still outstanding when at full tilt, have it in them to give them an almighty run for their money. And, hell with it, even knock off their “invincible” crown!

Liverpool edged past Nuno Espirito Santo’s team at Anfield a mere four weeks ago thanks to Sadio Mane’s goal. They’d take an identical outcome tonight; it’d be a huge hurdle cleared and I would say that, of their remaining fixtures, Man City (a) on 4 April is the only tougher gig than this.

A win for Wolves would put them three points off the Champions League spots; a draw would still lift them to fifth. Make no mistake, this is a heavyweight clash and we’ll have it especially for *you* at 8pm UK time.