MOURINHO: WE WON’T BEAT BEST
FROM BACK PAGE goals from substitute Xherdan Shaqiri sealed the win which took Liverpool back above Manchester City to the top of the table.
Liverpool’s 19-point lead over arch rivals United – whose 29 goals conceded so far is one more than in the whole of last season – is their biggest ever 17 games into a top-flight season.
Mourinho’s position is once again under threat and he blamed the injured players inherited from former bosses David Moyes and Louis van Gaal for the inability to compete with the likes of Liverpool and City.
“We’ve lots of problems related to physicality,” he said. “We’ve lots of players I could consider injury problems, because some of our players are always injured and it’s not with me – it was before me.
“If you look to the stats with Mr Van Gaal and David, we had players permanently injured and, when you’re permanently injured, physicality is difficult to get.
“Then there are qualities you can’t improve or make them have. Robertson, Mane, Salah, Wijnaldum,
Keita, Fabinho
– they are physical players and on top of that they are good technically.
“I’ve lots of good players technically, but we don’t have that intensity or physicality.”
Jesse Lingard cancelled out Sadio Mane’s opener at Anfield, but Liverpool – with 36 shots to United’s six – took command after the break and demolished the visitors, whose £89million record signing Paul Pogba was on the bench for a third league game in a row.
Kop boss Klopp said: “It was a brilliant start, one of the best performances we’ve had since I’ve been at Liverpool.” Liverpool Man City Tottenham Chelsea Arsenal Man Utd Wolves Everton West Ham Watford Bournemouth Leicester Brighton Newcastle Crystal Palace Cardiff Southampton Burnley Huddersfield Fulham P 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 W 14 14 13 11 10 7 7 6 7 7 7 6 6 4 4 4 2 3 2 2 D 3 2 0 4 4 5 4 6 3 3 2 4 3 4 3 2 6 3 4 3 L 0 1 4 2 3 5 6 5 7 7 8 7 8 9 10 11 9 11 11 12 F 37 48 31 35 37 29 19 24 25 23 25 21 20 14 14 17 16 15 10 16
MATCH STATS
REF: ATT: