After the first month of the European football season, Liverpool looked inevitable. Fresh off of a Premier League title and an active summer transfer window, the Reds won each of their first five domestic matches and their Champions League opener. But two and a half months later, that could hardly feel like a more distant memory: Liverpool is just ninth in the Premier League and 13th in the Champions League with three matches left in the latter competition’s league phase.
The road won’t get any easier in Matchweek 6 for the Reds, as they’ll travel to face Inter Milan at the San Siro. The game will begin at 3 p.m. ET (9 p.m. local).
The Nerazzurri are +110 favorites to win and +270 to draw at DraftKings Sportsbook, while Liverpool is +230 on the Moneyline.
Inter Milan vs. Liverpool prediction, pick
The Reds have been in the news for all the wrong reasons this week, as club legend Mohamed Salah, disgruntled after Arne Slot dropped him to the bench for consecutive recent matches, spoke out against his team and suggested that he would likely leave the club following the Africa Cup of Nations tournament. As the impasse between the star player and his team continues, he wasn’t included in the squad for Liverpool’s trip to Italy, so it’s possible that he’s already played his last game with the club he’s represented since 2017.
The drama surrounding Salah is an unwelcome development for a team that, in its last six matches, has suffered a trio of three-goal defeats and drew against two newly-promoted Premier League sides in Leeds United and Sunderland. The Reds’ attack has looked more clinical with its front line led by Hugo Ekitike, a 23-year-old Frenchman and the less-ballyhooed of Liverpool’s two summer striker arrivals, but its defense has done it no favors, conceding three to a Leeds team lacking top-quality talent up front. It could perform somewhat better than it did a few weeks ago in allowing four to PSV Eindhoven, now that Alisson is back in between the sticks after a two-month injury absence, but the Brazilian started against the Peacocks too and is having arguably the worst season of his career. What’s more, the Reds’ problems in the back aren’t solely Alisson’s; they rank sixth-to-last in tackle percentage, fourth-to-last in tackles + interceptions, and 14th-to-last in opponent shot on target percentage.
That sort of sloppiness won’t cut it against Inter, which trails Napoli by merely a point in Serie A and is one of just five teams with 12 or more points in the League Phase. The Nerazzurri haven’t played quite to the same level in 2025-26 as they did last season, when they came within 90 minutes of a Champions League title, but their only three defeats in the last three months came in the league against Napoli and AC Milan and in the Champions League against Atlético Madrid, all of which are pretty good teams. Lautaro Martínez has 11 goals in 18 appearances across all competitions, including four in the Champions League, and Marcus Thuram has contributed eight goals as well. Defender Denzel Dumfries, who had a shocking five goal contributions in the two-legged semifinal against Barcelona last season, already has two Champions League goals. Plus, Inter has been as strong as ever in the back, conceding just three goals in five matches behind the brilliant Yann Sommer. Unlike Liverpool, Inter leads the Champions League in tackle percentage and in the top half in tackles + interceptions while forcing fairly few and fairly low-quality shots.
History and on-paper quality would suggest that, at some point, the Reds are bound to turn their season around — by market value, Liverpool’s squad is nearly twice as valuable as Inter’s — but they’ve done nothing to demonstrate that they deserve the benefit of the doubt. They are neither clinical enough in attack or in defense, and Inter is in hot form in both. At San Siro, the Nerazzurri have dropped just three points all season to a team that does not also play its home games there. If the Reds couldn’t win at Galatasaray, they stand a tall order of winning at Inter.
