Liverpool vs. Manchester City score: Mohamed Salah nets winner at Anfield as Jurgen Klopp sees red

Mohamed Salah breathed new life into Liverpool’s season as his second-half strike earned the Reds a 1-0 victory over Manchester City in an absorbing contest at Anfield.

Jurgen Klopp’s side still have work to do to catch up with their great rivals but at least they looked a match for City, no small achievement after a difficult start to the season. With Salah on song though, nothing is impossible.

Precious few chances came the way of either side in an intriguing first half, one where Erling Haaland headed too close to Alisson at one end whilst Andrew Robertson crashed over the bar after Ederson could only tip James Milner’s cross into a dangerous area. After recent difficulties in the top flight, this match was a healthy reminder of how effective Liverpool can be against the best opposition and even in City’s most dominant moments early on the hosts’ goal was never under unbearable pressure.

It took until the 50th minute for this game to reach the standard of its forbearers. When these two do deliver, however, there is nothing like it, that thrilling cocktail of footballing excellence and occasionally baffling decision-making under pressure. The touchpaper moment had both, Mohamed Salah bursting away from a slipping Ruben Dias and into the box only to roll the ball wide of goal. Ederson had done magnificently to get a glove on the shot. He would have had no chance if Salah had squared to an unmarked Diogo Jota.

Seconds later City thought they were leading, Haaland having poked the ball away from Alisson for Phil Foden to thump into the net. However, the Norwegian’s claiming of a chunk of Fabinho’s shirt in the build-up meant Anthony Taylor was swiftly overturning his initial decision. This was breathless stuff and moments later it was Liverpool cursing their luck when Salah’s gorgeous cross with the outside of his boot was flicked over by Jota. 

The Egyptian was at the heart of the contest and it increasingly felt like one of he or Haaland would win this game for their respective sides. It would prove to be the former, taking down Alisson’s long goal kick and spinning Joao Cancelo in one touch before this time beating Ederson.

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Virgil van Dijk’s brilliant clearing header denied Haaland an equalizer off Cancelo’s cross soon after as the game rose to a crescendo. Klopp saw red after his indignant response to a perceived foul by Bernardo Silva on Salah before Darwin Nunez wasted a three-on-one chance after doing excellent work to close down Cancelo’s pass. When he did make the right call to square the ball, his fellow substitute Trent Alexander-Arnold could not quite convert.

City were unable to punish those lapses in judgment and now find themselves four points off Arsenal, whose record as the only side to go unbeaten through a Premier League season will now endure for another 18 months, at the summit of the table. Perhaps more concerning for Pep Guardiola and company will be the fact that their great rivals have cut the gap to 10 points. This version of Liverpool could put together the sort of winning run that bridges that before May.

Salah gets back to his best

The whispers and doubts had just been creeping up before this week. Was Salah suffering more than a wobble? Was there real cause for concern in his relatively meager scoring return now that he is in his 30s? For now, those concerns have been dispelled. It was not merely the goal, magnificently taken though it was, that put you in mind of the Egyptian at his regal best. It was the menace that coursed through his every action.

Drifting towards the center forward position that seems a more natural fit for him in Klopp’s 4-4-2 than the right-wing berth he had occupied against Arsenal last week, Salah found himself at the heart of the action, in the sort of position where he could pray on the nerves of the City defense. Whether the pressure of having one of the league’s most deadly forward in his rearview mirror forced Dias to slip only the man himself will know but it was in keeping with how defenders tend to react when Salah is in the mood.

Liverpool fans might have been disappointed to see him spurn that chance and others that came his way but the key thing was he was getting in position to miss them. Give him enough and the goal would inevitably come, a moment of balletic elegance as he punished Cancelo for getting too close to him. But then you could hardly blame the City full-back for not wanting to give his man the space to run at him. Salah is in the mood and it is forcing defenders into mistakes. Things are back to the way they were.

Guardiola fumes over the goal that wasn’t

Klopp might have been the manager given his marching orders but his counterpart in the Manchester City dugout felt no less aggrieved after his side were denied a goal moments after Salah’s big miss. 

“The referee said play on, play on, play on, there were a thousand million fouls like this and this one is because we scored a goal,” said Guardiola after the game. “So they disallowed [it] because we scored a goal, otherwise it would not have been disallowed.”

You can see why the City boss is aggrieved even if it is probably the case that Haaland had grabbed a little too much of Fabinho’s shirt. The initial assumption when Taylor, largely excellent in this game, headed to the monitor is that the poking of the ball away from Alisson would be under his radar. Instead, the focus turned to what was not the sort of decision that one would usually suggest ought to be within VAR’s purview. 

If there is fault there it does not lie with Taylor, who let the game flow and in doing so heightened the drama of this superb contest. Instead, questions could be asked of Simon Bennett at Stockley Park. Did he need to instruct the man on the ground to take another look? Was this really a clear and obvious error in the build-up to the goal?

As good a weekend for Arsenal as Liverpool

If anyone was toasting events at Anfield as warmly as Liverpool supporters it might have been Mikel Arteta, whose Arsenal side find themselves four points clear at the top of the table after beating Leeds 1-0. The only faint cloud on the horizon might be a victory that boosts Klopp’s chance of a top-four (or even top-two finish) but the Gunners will take that if it allows them to sit at the Premier League summit a while longer. Arsenal are still emphatic underdogs to Manchester City with 10 games gone in the season but the longer they hold first place the greater belief will build in north London.

To make matters even better, the great moment in Arsenal history remains unmatched in the modern era. Liverpool’s win means that the 2003-04 side are still the only team to go undefeated in a 38-game English top-flight season. If the hyper team from the Etihad can’t match the Invincibles who can?