25 Liverpool players feature in Arne Slot’s first pre-season friendly – loss to Preston!

Liverpool stepped up their pre-season preparations with a friendly against Championship side Preston on Friday, with 25 players featuring in a 1-0 loss.

The Reds are still in the early stages of their pre-season, and therefore a warmup defeat to Preston – who themselves were playing their fourth friendly of the summer already – should be no concern.

Instead, the intrigue is more in who featured, for how long and in which combinations, as Slot fielded two different XIs at the AXA Training Centre.

The first half saw a side closest to his strongest available, with Vitezslav Jaros in goal behind a back four of Conor Bradley, Sepp van den Berg, Jarell Quansah and Kostas Tsimikas.

Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and Dominik Szoboszlai – whose minutes were managed – started in midfield while Ben Doak, Fabio Carvalho and Mohamed Salah lined up in attack.

Doak, Salah and Elliott were among the biggest threats for Liverpool, but it was visiting midfielder Robbie Brady who netted the only goal of the Game around the half-hour.

Brady, formerly of Hull, Norwich and Burnley, was able to lob Jaros from 40 yards after stealing the ball in the Liverpool half.

Slot brought Szoboszlai off soon after, with Wataru Endo taking his place, and the defensive midfielder was the only player retained after half-time.

Youngsters Harvey Davies, Luca Stephenson, Amara Nallo, Luke Chambers, Lewis Koumas and Kaide Gordon were all brought in along with more senior staples in Nat Phillips, Stefan Bajcetic, Tyler Morton and Kaide Gordon.

Owen Beck, Trey Nyoni and Harvey Blair were introduced with 15 minutes to play, but despite dominating the Game the Reds saw few genuine opportunities.

It will be viewed as a worthwhile exercise by Slot and his staff, of course, with the first warmup under their belt ahead of a tour of the United States.

Many of those who featured on Friday will be included in the squad to Travel for clashes with Real Betis, Arsenal and Man United.

Interestingly, there was no involvement for Caoimhin Kelleher, who has not been spotted in training of late, while Jayden Danns and Andy Robertson also missed out.

It had been speculated that Liverpool could play more than one behind-closed-doors friendly before flying Stateside, but this now seems unlikely given they are due to travel on Tuesday.

Liverpool first-half XI: Jaros; Bradley, Van den Berg, Quansah, Tsimikas; Jones, Elliott, Szoboszlai (Endo 33′); Doak, Carvalho, Salah

Liverpool second-half XI: Davies; Stephenson, Nallo, Phillips, Chambers (Beck 75′); Endo (Nyoni 75′), Bajcetic, Morton, McConnell; Koumas (Blair 75′), Gordon