The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Scottish full-back Andy Robertson
Premier league: Klopp’s men hold on after three goals in nine minutes
goes to celebrate with Sadio Mane after Liverpool’s third goal in yesterday’s 4-3 win over Premier League leaders Manchester City at Anfield, the visitors’ first league defeat of the season.
Liverpool’s forwards came out top in the battle of the Premier League’s great entertainers as City’s unbeaten start to the season was ended in remarkable fashion at Anfield.
Having won all but two of their league matches this season, Pep Guardiola’s side found themselves 4-1 down midway through the second half and looked well beaten before a late rally set up a nervejangling finale but the hosts held on.
The end of their 30-match unbeaten run, stretching back to April, handed Manchester United the chance to cut City’s lead to 12 against Stoke tonight.
Having drawn level just before the break when Leroy Sane cancelled out Alex Oxlade-chamberlain’s early opener, City were torn apart by three brilliant goals in nine minutes from Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, although all were assisted by defensive errors.
Substitute Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan scored late on to raise hopes of an unlikely comeback but Liverpool held on to extend their own unbeaten run to 18 matches, their longest sequence since 2008.
Klopp, whose post-match press conference was bizarrely interrupted by an interloper asking him about his favourite type of cake, said: “You need a really good football team to do that (to City) and, thank God, I have one.
“It was just a joy to watch, how both teams threw everything on the pitch. It is a nice commercial for Premier League football.
“The whole world was watching. If someone didn’t watch football until now, now they’ll see why people watch it all the time. I’m really happy about it.”
City boss Pep Guardiola said: “My first words are congratulations to Liverpool for the victory. It was a good game.
“They started well. We lost a lot of balls because they are so aggressive without the ball and we had problems controlling that.
“After that we started to play much better and we have good chances, especially in the second half we started good – until the goal from Firmino.
“After that we lost a bit of control. We were involved in the environment of Anfield, for many reasons.
“You have to try to be stable and there are good lessons (to be learned), especially for the knockout stages of the Champions League.”