TWOJOTTO HANDLE!
Diogo at the double as Diaz dazzles to help Reds brush Foxes aside and keep up pressure on City
THE neutrals can breathe easily again for a few more days at least – Liverpool are not giving up their title hopes without a fearsome scrap.
They maintained an admittedly distant pressure on leaders Manchester City with an impressive, sometimes dogged, sometimes delightful victory over Leicester that showed they still have a real interest in the fight.
And in doing so, they may just have unearthed yet another star in the making from the conveyor belt of talent that has fed into Anfield during Jurgen Klopp’s reign, with a pulsating Premier League debut from £37million Luis Diaz.
He was unlucky not to cap his first full appearance with a goal in front of the Kop, denied only by Leicester keeper Kasper Schmeichel’s wonderful saves.
Instead, Liverpool had another huge talent, Diogo Jota, to thank for the victory, with two more goals making it 17 this season.
They will wonder though, how Mo Salah did not make life more comfortable at the end. He came on as a sub in the second half and showed his class to destroy the visiting defence, but was denied by Schmeichel (below), and then by the angle of post and bar.
It mattered not, as Diaz and Jota inspired the Reds to victory. Klopp is usually not so eager to throw new signings into his starting eleven, as Andy Robertson and Fabinho can testify, both taking six months after arrival to become regulars.
Yet the sheer number of minutes played by Salah and Sadio Mane at the Africa Cup of Nations seemed to force his hand. Mane was given an extra few days off following Senegal’s triumph at the tournament, and Salah – on the losing side with Egypt in that final – starting on the bench. And he will be glad.
Diaz did not need long to announce himself, and show why the Reds boss has been so keen to get the Colombia winger. There is his pace for a start – stretching Foxes full-back James Justin, and pinning him back.
His movement too, caused new problems for a Leicester
defence which had looked far too comfortable against their more familiar front line, in inflicting a title-hopes damaging defeat of Liverpool at Christmas.
Diaz nearly created a chance for himself within the first minute when he burst into the box and turned smartly onto a Curtis Jones ball that Daniel Amartey did well to block.
Soon after, he put Marc Albrighton on his backside with a piece of skill that had the Kop drooling, and wondering if their boss had pulled off another coup.
The signs look good, with the former Porto player integral to most of Liverpool’s attacking threat in the first half, the visitors sitting with a deep defensive block and a vague idea to play on the break. Perhaps the best move of the half – and the – came with some swift, delightful interchanges and his clever, unselfish pass to Alexander-arnold, whose whipped cross nearly found Andy Robertson.
Yet the goal which calmed Anfield nerves came from a more agricultural route, Virgil van Dijk losing his marker to head a corner goalwards, and Jota sharply converting the rebound when Schmeichel saved.
It was all Liverpool in the second half, with Salah’s class to the fore, especially when he dummied Amartey, and Diaz showing energy and desire.
Jota got a second late on (right). It was enough to sustain the title race a while longer, and for that, those outside east Manchester will be glad.