Liverpool stretch title race out to Monday morning
Liverpool took the Premier League title race with Manchester City to the final round of the season after coming from behind again to beat Southampton 2-1.
Joel Matip completed Liverpool’s latest comeback by unwittingly heading home the winning goal in the 67th minute, leaving Jurgen Klopp’s team a point behind City with one game left for each team.
That’s on Monday NZT, when Liverpool host Wolverhampton at the same time as City are at home to Aston Villa — managed by Liverpool great Steven Gerrard.
City remain the favourites but Liverpool have done their part by taking the defending champions to the wire.
The quadruple is still on for Liverpool, but only just.
Klopp fielded basically a secondchoice lineup at St. Mary’s Stadium, with the game coming only three days after Liverpool’s energy-sapping FA Cup final against Chelsea that went 120 minutes before the Reds won a penalty shootout.
Despite the slew of changes, Liverpool dominated a passive Southampton team with nothing left to play for this season but still fell behind in the 13th minute when Nathan Redmond cut inside from the left and sent in a shot that deflected off James Milner and into the far corner.
Liverpool’s players kept their composure and replied 14 minutes later when Diogo Jota laid the ball off to Takumi Minamino, who displayed quick feet before firing a rising shot inside Alex McCarthy’s near post. The Japan forward was on loan at Southampton last season and hadn’t started a league game since.
The rest of the match saw Liverpool camped inside Southampton’s half but only managing half-chances. The atmosphere was starting to get tense when Liverpool were gifted what proved to be the winning goal, after a corner by Kostas Tsimikas was glanced on at the near post by Southampton forward Mohamed Elyounoussi.
The ball flew across the area, skimmed off the head of Southampton’s Kyle Walker-Peters, hit the forehead of Matip and rebounded into the far corner beyond McCarthy’s despairing dive.
Liverpool came from behind in their last two league games, a 2-1 win against Villa and a 1-1 draw with Spurs.