Salah was the matchwinner, Gomez, Van Dijk and Milner the match savers as Liverpool end Manchester City’s unbeaten start in a Barclays classic.
1. Let’s start with the obvious. This was just an absolutely brilliant game of football between what today still looked, despite what the league table or the last couple of months or Arsenal might have to say about it, very much like the best two teams in the country. Certainly it’s hard to imagine any other fixture in the league producing the heady mix of elite quality and riotous entertainment we got here.
The real beauty of clashes between these sides is you don’t get a hint of that thing that sometimes happens when two truly great sides meet and end up cancelling each other out. Styles make fights, as the saying goes, and Liverpool v Manchester City just… works. The first half built the suspense nicely; it was tense and technical and tetchy in parts yet at no point did you have any doubt the second half was going to be great. And the second half was really, really great.
2. The crucial moment, in which the game’s only goal was scored by the player who deserved it most, came three minutes after his afternoon’s work appeared to be over. It seemed baffling when the number 11 went up as Jurgen Klopp opted for a triple substitution to perk Liverpool up as City threatened to at last gain control of the game. Mo Salah had been by far Liverpool’s best and busiest attacker and the likeliest deadlock-breaker. Unless there was an injury, removing him was a madness. Luckily, Klopp was apparently as baffled as anyone else and the mistake was rectified.
3. And soon after came the pandemonium of that brilliant winning goal. It was a wonderful thing. Simple in one way (Alisson, Salah, goal) yet full of intricacy and explosive pace and then the composure of the finish. The spin that took Salah around and away from Joao Cancelo as he attempted to nick the ball away was so good. It made Gary Neville do a noise, and you always know something good has happened if it makes Gary Neville do a noise.
As a neutral, you found yourself hoping he would score because that pirouette quite simply needed a finish to match it. And Salah, who had been spectacularly denied by Ederson with a previous one-on-one chance, gave City’s keeper no opportunity this time. An atmosphere that was already absolutely fizzing reached a fever pitch where it would remain for the rest of the match and quite possibly still is…
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