Friendlies season is upon us now and while they may not be competitive matches with much meaning other than seeing how next season's team may set up, they can be very entertaining.
So this brings us to yesterday as Liverpool, under new manager Arne Slot lined up against Preston North End at Liverpool's Axa Training Centre for a behind closed doors friendly against the championship side.
Now a behind closed doors match is meant to be a chance for managers to play to experiment even more with players without having any media duties or anything else that a normal matchday might have.
There was only one goal in the match for Preston scored by Ireland International Robbie Brady and the clip of the screamer has gone viral.
The goal came after Brady nicked the ball off the Liverpool defender and he caught keeper Vitezslav Jaros off his line. Brady then launched an audacious 40-yard lob over Jaros to score the only goal of the match and Preston won 1-0.
Here it is. Robbie's outrageous strike against @LFC. 🤯#pnefc pic.twitter.com/eNPxrmslNJ
— Preston North End FC (@pnefc) July 19, 2024
It was the sweetest of strikes from Robbie Brady and the former Burnley man played himself back into Ireland contention in the last two squads. With more strikes like that he may remain in the plans for new manager Heimir Hallgrímsson.
The result may not have gone Liverpool's way but it seems like Arne Slot took the opportunity to test out some players. Slot fielded 25 players over the 90 minutes, including some first team names like Mohamed Salah, Curtis Jones and Dominik Szoboszlai but the game didn't go the reds way.
It will be interesting to see how Liverpool look ahead of the new season under Slot. The Reds are still to sign a player yet this summer and with some key players hitting the other side of 30 it looks like Slot still has to finish the rebuild Klopp started.
