Jurgen Klopp drops early hint at Liverpool team vs Union SG

Jurgen Klopp has dropped an early hint at team news for Liverpool vs Union SG in the UEFA Europa League this week. Here's what you can expect.

Liverpool will go into their final Europa League group game against Union SG with nothing riding on it. The Reds are already through as group winners - win, lose or draw, nothing changes that on Thursday.

And given it's the busy Christmas period, Jurgen Klopp has every incentive to rest his senior stars this midweek. And there's the visit of Manchester United this weekend, if that wasn't enough.

It's one of the biggest games of the season - arguably the biggest - and the Reds can carry an advantage into it if they rotate intelligently. United had a hard-fought fixture with Bayern Munich that saw them leave with some injuries. Liverpool can essentially just rest the first-team. That could be decisive.

And it certainly sounds as though Klopp plans on doing just that. He talked about youth players in his pre-match press conference on Wednesday and how he sees opportunities to develop young players.

"I'm really a believer we need a strong Under 23s," he said. "They don't always need to be at the same time out on loan everywhere.

There are different ways to develop talents. Especially after long injuries [as with Kaide Gordon] - you should not think immediately 'now he's fit again, send him out'.

"So we have a really good group together of young boys. Some of them we will see tomorrow, that's clear."

This was certainly predicted as Liverpool included a number of youth players in their training sessions this week. Everyone should expect a couple of debuts and potentially a much-changed starting XI that features U23 talent.

At the end of the day, it's the smart thing to do both in terms of rest for this month as well as the development of the youngsters. That should make for an exciting game despite nothing being on the line.