A week further from baking Tottenham 5-1 to conquer the Premier League title, the Parade of Liverpool starts with a trip to Chelsea.
The newly crowned champions can go to Stamford Bridge with something of a hangover, although the Arne Slot team still has to be sure to win another victory on the board in what a sensational top campaign is.
Dominic Solanke's goal did not go according to the script in Anfield last week, but Liverpool started to quickly dismantle traces and to complete a title that has long been theirs.
Liverpool proved why they were by far the best Premier League team this season with a clinical representation of violence.
Now they still have a London club to record it.
This will be the seventh Premier League match of Chelsea against an already crowned champions, most of each party.
They only won one of the previous six (D2 L3) and defeated Manchester United with 1-0 in 2012-2013, while one of their defeats was a 5-3 reverse against Liverpool in July 2020.
But the Enzo Maresca team has enough to fight for, because they are involved in the struggle for Champions League qualification.
Here we dive into the best Opta insights prior to Sunday's collision.
What is expected?
At a certain stage earlier this season, Chelsea was depicted as potential title rivals to Liverpool, although their hope was poured by a bad Run around Christmas.
That came a few months after they lost 2-1 in Anfield in the reverse match, with Mohamed Salah and Curtis Jones on Target for the Reds, both sides of a goal from Nicolas Jackson.
Liverpool wants to complete their first competition-dubbele on Chelsea since their title-winning 2019-20 campaign.
Slot could only be the third Reds boss who won the two first two league games against Chelsea that is responsible for the club, after Bill Shankly and Roy Evans.
Chelsea is Winless in their last 10 meetings with Liverpool in all competitions (D7 L3), only once before he goes longer without a victory over the Reds (11 from 1985 to 1990).
The OPTA Supercomputer supports the blues in this, although it is expected that it is a tight match, with the chance that a draw will arrive at 24.8%.
Chelsea came at the top in 43.3% of the simulations -led simulations, while Liverpool won 31.9%.
What about Chelsea's Champions League Hoop? After the defeat of Nottingham Forest against Brentford on Thursday, the blues have a 49.4% chance of ending in the top five. Maresca will know on Sunday that a victory would do their prospects a world of good.
Being good at the most important moment
Maresca went with young people this season, and perhaps that inexperience the blues was previously hindered this campaign when the pressure of a potential title race told.
This season, Chelsea has not used any player older than 27 years in a Premier League match, with this run of 34 games the longest through one side in the Premier League history. The previous longest had only been six of Liverpool in April/May 2000.
A series of only one win in seven games in December and January saw Chelsea fall far from the pace of Liverpool, but the blues have been in excellent form lately.
Chelsea picked up 17 points in their last eight Premier League matches (W5 D2 L1), after they have only collected nine points from their previous 10 in advance (W2 D3 L5).
They also have one foot in the final of the Conference League, after a 4-1 victory in the first stage of their semi-final draw with Djurgarden, with Noni Madueke, Jadon Sancho and Nicolas Jackson on Target.
All in all, they seem to be putting it back on at the right time in what a busy race is for the top five.
Jackson returned to scoring form last week with the winner against Everton and then yielded a double against Djurgarden, while Enzo Fernandez proves a creative force in midfield.
Nicoooo! #CFC | #Uecl pic.twitter.com/WR2yGJGYAK
– Chelsea FC (@chelseafc) May 1, 2025
Only three players have created more opportunities in the Premier League this season than Enzo Fernandez (73). The only Argentines that create more in a seasonal record (since 2003-04) are Emiliano Buendia in 2019-2020 for Norwich (83) and Erik Lamela in 2015-16 for Spurs (75).
Cole Palmer is now always able to spectacular, even if he has not shot all cylinders in the rear half of the campaign.
Slot's mean, lean, winning machine
However, the scale of the task that Chelsea is confronted cannot be underestimated.
Liverpool has not lost any of their last 20 Premier League matches in the month of May (W16 D4), although their last defeat in 2018 was on Stamford Bridge against Chelsea.
The Reds have an average of 2.41 points per match in the competition this season. In just three of his eight full seasons that were in charge, Slot's predecessor Jurgen Klopp has on average more points per game than the Reds so far this term-in 2021-22 (2.42), 2018-19 (2.55) and when winning the title in 2019-20 (2.60).
Slot is the fifth Premier League boss who wins the title in his first season in the competition, without counting the inaugural campaign. He followed in the footsteps of Jose Mourinho (Chelsea, 2004-05), Carlo Ancelotti (Chelsea, 2009-10), Manuel Pellegrini (Man City, 2013-14) and Antonio Conte (Chelsea, 2016-17).
Liverpool scored in each of their last 30 Premier League matches since a 1-0 defeat against Nottingham Forest in September. The only side that had a longer scoring run in a single campaign was Arsenal in the 2001-02 campaign, which scored in all 38 games.
Their goal post is 80, 14 more than the next best Manchester City (66), while Liverpool has registered a competition-leading goals.
No team has (136) or scored (53) as many great opportunities as the Reds.
But they have also been brilliantly defending, chased by the Evergreen Virgil van Dijk.
Only Arsenal has admitted fewer goals (29) than Liverpool (32), with the Reds giving up the least expected goals against (28.94 XGA) of each team.
Chelsea is perhaps the small favorites, according to the Opta model, but this is a huge test.
Players to watch
Chelsea – Cole Palmer
Only four Premier League players have registered more target contributions this season than Cole Palmer (22).
The former City attacker of Manchester has scored 14 goals and set up another eight, although he did not score in the top flight since doing this against Bournemouth in January.
Since then, Palmer has had 41 shots, on average 3.91 per 90, but his drought rolls on.
Liverpool – Mohamed Salah
Salah has scored 28 Premier League objectives and has another 18 assists this season and needs one goal or help to match the record for goal involvement in one season, held by Andrew Cole in 1993-94 and Alan Shearer in 1994-95 (34 goals, 13 assists in both cases).
He also needs only one goal to match the record for goals of 30 years or older in a single Premier League season, which was determined by Didier Drogba for Chelsea in 2009-10 (29).
The Egyptian was unable to force his way in Chelsea, but he enjoyed playing against them, which contributes to nine goals (five goals, four assists) in 14 competition meetings with the blues.
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