Liverpool FC vs Nottingham Forest FC

The awkward fact first, because it belongs at the top rather than buried in a caveat. On 22 November 2025, Nottingham Forest went to Anfield and won 3-0. Not a smash-and-grab, not a single deflected goal defended for an hour — three goals, no reply, at the ground where this fixture is about to be played again.

The return told a more conventional story. Liverpool won 1-0 at the City Ground on 22 February 2026, a narrow away victory of the kind their season produced regularly. Across the two meetings Forest scored three and Liverpool one, and the aggregate flatters the visitors considerably more than the league table does.

So the recent history is genuinely split, and it is split in the direction that hurts a home-favourite selection. What it does not establish is a pattern. One heavy defeat in a fixture Liverpool have otherwise controlled is an outlier with a scoreline attached, and outliers are exactly what a market covering two of three outcomes exists to absorb. But it is real, it happened at this venue nine months ago, and it is the reason this preview spends a paragraph on it rather than a clause.

Liverpool finished fifth on 60 points from 17 wins, nine draws and twelve defeats, with 63 scored and 53 conceded. By the club's own standards that was a poor campaign — twelve league defeats is a lot for a side of these resources, and 53 conceded is not a title-winning number. It was still comfortably the better of the two seasons in this fixture.

Nottingham Forest finished sixteenth on 44 points from 11-11-16, scoring 48 and conceding 51. That left them two places and five points above the relegation zone, and the defeat column is the relevant half of the record: sixteen losses against eleven wins is the ledger of a team that survived rather than competed. Sixty points against 44, and a goal difference of plus ten against minus three, is a substantial gap even in a season where the home side underperformed.

The new campaign has produced one fixture each. Liverpool drew 2-2 away at Newcastle on 23 August, trailing 1-0 at the interval before recovering a point at a difficult ground — a reasonable start rather than a statement. Forest lost 1-0 at home to Leeds on 22 August, the game still goalless at the interval — the least encouraging way to open a season, a home defeat to a side that finished fourteenth, without a goal to show for it.

One round is one round, and neither result carries much weight on its own. The table showing Liverpool eleventh and Forest fifteenth is noise. Last season is the evidence that matters, and last season put sixteen points between these clubs.

The first factor is the sixteen-point gap, and it is the backbone of the pick. Fifth against sixteenth is not a fixture between peers, even in a season where fifth felt like a disappointment. Liverpool scored fifteen more goals across 38 matches and finished thirteen goals better off on difference.

The second is Forest's defeat count. Sixteen losses in a season is the profile of a team that gets beaten regularly and in a wide range of circumstances, including at grounds far less demanding than this one. A market that requires Liverpool merely to avoid losing is asking for the outcome that occurred in 26 of Liverpool's 38 league games and, from the other side, betting against something Forest managed once at Anfield and eleven times in total all season.

The third is the state of the two clubs entering round two. Liverpool took a point at Newcastle from a losing position; Forest lost at home without scoring. Neither is decisive, but they run in the same direction as everything else.

The fourth is the price. At a shade over 1.25 the market is asking for a high strike rate, and this is one of the few fixtures in the round where the underlying evidence supports one. Our own record says double chance is the market where we make money, and short-priced double chances on clear favourites are where that edge is most reliable, provided the favourite is genuinely clear. Sixteen points and a home fixture make this one clear.

The fifth is the reason this is not a certainty. Forest have already produced a 3-0 at Anfield inside the last twelve months, Liverpool conceded 53 goals last season and two more at Newcastle last weekend, and an 11:30 Sunday kick-off is the sort of flat occasion in which a well-drilled visiting side can catch a home crowd cold.

Our pick is Double Chance 1X (Liverpool FC or Draw) at 1.25, with high confidence. Four things line up: a sixteen-point gap in last season's table, a visiting side that lost sixteen league matches, Liverpool's superior goal difference by thirteen, and the round-one evidence, thin as it is, pointing the same way.

At this price the selection has to win close to four times in five to be worth having, and that is exactly the standard the numbers meet. Liverpool avoided defeat in 26 of 38 league games in a season they were unhappy with, and they do so at Anfield against sixteenth-placed opposition considerably more often than the raw rate implies.

We passed on the straight home win, which will be priced near the level where our record says we lose money, and on the goals markets, where Forest's 48 scored and Liverpool's inconsistent defence make a line genuinely hard to call. The double chance is the cleanest expression of a view we actually hold.

The thing that beats it is a repeat of last November. Forest have already shown they can defend deep at Anfield and score on the break there, and they did it by three goals rather than one. If they arrive with the same plan and Liverpool are as loose at the back as their 53 conceded suggests, the pick is in trouble inside twenty minutes.