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LIVERPOOL TOOK A giant stride towards the Premier League title on Sunday as a 2-0 win over Manchester City opened up an 11-point lead at the top of the table over Arsenal.
Mohamed Salah was again Liverpool’s star performer as he opened the scoring with his 30th goal of the season before setting up Dominik Szoboszlai to double the lead before half-time.
Just days after exiting the Champions League to Real Madrid, this was another sobering defeat for the dethroned English champions, who are now 20 points adrift of the leaders.
So often during Pep Guardiola’s glorious reign, Liverpool have come up just short in English football’s great rivalry of recent years. However, their time to match Manchester United’s record of 20 English top-flight titles now appears just months away in Arne Slot’s first season in charge.
Arsenal’s shock 1-0 home defeat to West Ham on Saturday had eased the pressure on Liverpool, that had built after dropping points in two of their last three games at Everton and Aston Villa.
A trip to the Etihad has for so long been the stiffest test of all, but City’s defensive frailties were easily exposed and they also badly missed the presence of the injured Erling Haaland in attack.
Liverpool, by contrast, had their talisman fit and firing as Salah took his staggering tally this season to 25 goals and 16 assists in 27 Premier League appearances.
The Egyptian fired the visitors in front on 14 minutes thanks to a brilliantly executed set-piece routine.
Alexis Mac Allister’s corner was flicked by Szoboszlai into Salah’s path and his shot deflected off Nathan Ake past the despairing dive of Ederson.
At the other end, City’s own Egyptian international showed his ability to finish, but Omar Marmoush had strayed offside before being played in by Phil Foden.
City winger Jeremy Doku was skipping past Trent Alexander-Arnold at will, yet the Belgian consistently failed to deliver a telling cross or shot.
Salah was not so forgiving as he raced onto a long ball over the top and teed up Szoboszlai to wrong-foot Ederson.
The final outcome could have been much more humiliating for City had Liverpool had been as accurate on the counter-attack after the break.
Curtis Jones had a third goal ruled out by a VAR review for offside after Szoboszlai just failed to time his run through the heart of the City defence.
Ederson was forced into a stunning save from Luis Diaz and only a brilliant last-ditch tackle from Abdukodir Khusanov denied Szoboszlai a second.
Marmoush scored a hat-trick in last weekend’s 4-0 win over Newcastle and remained a lively threat as he flashed another effort across the front of Alisson Becker’s goal.
But City lacked the end product to make nearly 70% possession count.
Despite an eighth league defeat of the season, Guardiola’s men remain in fourth and will be confident of securing their place in the Champions League next season with a top-five finish likely to be enough.
However, after an unprecedented run of four consecutive titles, City look like yesterday’s team with Liverpool now champions in waiting.
Written by AFP and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.
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Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the school are shredding mats to be used as meat in the cafeteria
Sorry for going off-topic but I have to ask you- how do you pronounce your name Ste? Is it ‘stuh’, or ‘stee’, or ‘stay’? Puzzled me for years.
Pronounced like “Stee”.
‘Ste’, I believe that is German for ‘a whales vagina’, is it not?
There’s no way that’s true.
Sorry Emmet think you’re confusing that with “San Deigo”.
*Diego
No its horse vagina with no horse
There’s more to life than being grealy grealy grealy ridiculously good looking.
Ste classy San Diego!
Ste is Latin for “darkness of an open ringpiece”
I think your pulling our legs Justin
It feels a lot better bein an unemployed musician than an unemployed pipe fitter..
Depends on where your fitting the ‘pipe’
This comment thread is turning into an acid trip.
I have discovered that my wife has no brain or heart, should I be entitled to a refund or exchange in this circumstance as I feel that I have been mislead and feel that these items should have been included
That’s kind of worse.
Horseradish
But it’s only radish!
not if your a vegetarian. :-)
But if you are not, and you want to eat meat, and youre paying for meat, your rights are being infringed upon
@ MK, if your’e a veggie, why buy meat pie?
@ Tony Duff. I am a veggie and would of course buy this meat pie with no meat, hence being a veggie QED ;0)
When are they going to discover vegetarian pies with just meat in them?
Some kind of vegetable matter ….. Feck that sounds worse
That’s why vegetarians go to Iceland
There has never been any ham in hamburgers
I couldn’t figure this one out for years – about there being no ham in a hamburger.
…until a friend was kind enough to tell me that burgers were invented in Hamburg.
Nope… They were invented in america by a man from hamburg
Is that not the same thing?
I didn’t read the america bit properly – Saturday night, a few pints on!
It’s the vegetarian beef pie they tested.
Alan’s fact of the day: “Crabsticks” do not actually contain any crab and from 1993 manufacturers have been legally obliged to label them “Crab flavoured sticks”.
I have to say that brought a chuckle………
Iceland gets their first bite of a minced pie and it leaves them stumped. I remember my first minced pie I had at Christmas many years ago, I think they’ll soon discover its mostly raisins ;)
The history of the minced pie is interesting – In the 16th century, the royalty ate mince pies with minced beef – the proper stuff!
The kitchen staff would make pies with leftover fruit and spices and gave these “mince pies” to the peasants at Christmas as a good will gesture.
Now we’re in the 21st century and the rich [i.e. supermarkets] are at it again, except this time we, the peasants, are paying for the the deception.
The horse left Iceland for France.
But who took them?
The bloke on that radio ad., obviously!
;-)
The head of Iceland will probably say “that’s the Irish for you….”
Maybe Gerry and SF did it?
Im boycotting eating
One thing that does stand out for me almost as a footnote to the article is that it has been handed over to authorities, no doubt whoever is responsible will be held accountable and be brought before the courts. Any chance of that here, well probably not because no doubt it would upset the wrong people.
That’s Iceland for ya, they locked up the bankers, toppled their government and regulator. Kicked the FBI out of their country for interrogating a wiki leaks informant.
A bit of a mix up with their food that will be sorted, person who is responsible found out and suffering the consequence by the end of the week.
Ill have one of those please and an alcohol free beer to wash it down!!
We have digressed to groundshit day
I’d imagine a lot of the vegetable matter would be soy, just like in a lot of dog foods the “meaty” chunks are actually soy not meat!
That’s a relief!
not surprised – with all the 1€ crap their always selling.
This is Iceland the country, not the frozen food chain.
That would be a vegetarian matter, Ted.
Where’s the beef?
what next? chicken in chicken nuggets?
Where can I buy one?….seems to be the only safe thing to eat at present….
in iceland they sell horse meat labelled as horse meat in the market
“Vegetable matter”. That’s a great name for we don’t have a clue what it is
Ah sure I got mince pies at Christmas and all they had in them was fruit.
You are all stone mad, thanks for the giggles reading this thread
LOL
Maybe there are no horses left in Iceland, they were all sent to the rest of Europe for our pies…
For years in Ireland, we have pork-free Bacon Fries,and fish-free Scampi Fries, not to mention Tayto & Walkers “cheese & onion” crisps with Paprica & Garlic – only King don’t have these
E119 flavour please
Could be worse it could be a Puffin pie they eat them there too as well as Icelandic foal steaks there a delicacy
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