Liverpool have confirmed their final pre-season date will take place at Deepdale with SV Darmstadt the visitors.
Reports in June suggested that Liverpool were looking to borrow Preston North End’s Deepdale home for a pre-season friendly.
That sounded bizarre at the time and, to be quite honest, we’re still not really adjusted to the idea just yet.
Liverpool have building work going at Anfield this summer, meaning they can’t actually play friendlies there.
Anfield’s capacity is being expanded to around 61,000 this summer and work won’t be completed until August.
Jurgen Klopp’s men wanted a tune-up just six days before their Premier League campaign starts and the idea of borrowing Deepdale was brought up.
PNE subsequently asked for the first game of the Championship season to be away from home to save from overloading the Deepdale pitch.
Sure enough, North End are away at Bristol City for the first game of the season and Liverpool are clear to use Deepdale.
Liverpool confirm Deepdale friendly
Liverpool have now announced the details of that friendly, with Bundesliga side SV Darmstadt heading to Lancashire.
The game will kick off at 7pm with PNE’s home now confirmed as the neutral venue for his fixture.
Relations between the clubs are strong; PNE boss Ryan Lowe is a Liverpool fan, assistant Mike Marsh is a former Reds player and Sepp van den Berg enjoyed a superb 18-month spell at Deepdale.
Van den Berg may even be in line to play at Deepdale once again if he is still a Liverpool player when they face Darmstadt.
Darmstadt are managed by Torsten Lieberknecht, who played with and was coached by Jurgen Klopp at Mainz.
The pair remain close friends and it’s no surprise to see them organise a friendly ahead of their seasons getting underway.
PNE will hopefully take in some cash from this game and have already struck a deal to take Liverpool talent Calvin Ramsay on loan.