Liverpool and Klopp won the battle against Conte’s Chelsea on Friday but when the final battle takes place in the war to win the Premier League this season, troops from both Liverpool and Chelsea will be on the front line.
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Chelsea fought back to control most of the second half but Liverpool did have further opportunities – but it was Chelsea’s Diego Costa who grabbed a goal back.
The Reds could not be contained from the outset, completely bossing the game in the opening 45 with goals to Dejan Lovren and a world-class strike from Jordan Henderson.
After the brilliant start to the season, this was seen as the first big test for Chelsea and Antonio Conte.
The win moved Liverpool level with Chelsea on 10 points after five games and prevented the Londoners from going top of the table. Ivanovic wins it but can only folick it on to the back post where Origi meets it at the apex of his leap and heads it down.
Nemanja Matic, anonymous in the first half, did brilliantly to carry the ball to the byline and pull back for Costa to sidefoot past Simon Mignolet and wake the home crowd. But the blunder began with Chelsea’s failure to close down from a throw-in. We know we can play football and we are convinced in our quality, that is all the truth. Pogba started well with a dynamic display in United’s 2-0 home win over Southampton last month, prompting Mourinho to say “I couldn’t be happier with him” after the game. “You must be patient in every moment, every single minute, every second”. We must feel the danger in every single moment of the game. First half we didn’t have the duels, we didn’t have the second ball, everything was for them.
“It’s not important [that] this defeat is my first defeat”, he said. Everyone who plays against Chelsea knows it’s hard to play against them, they are really well organised, but we created the space and played in them. In this case we paid because after the first half we were losing 2-0 and then it’s very hard.
Chelsea had to come from behind to draw 2-2 with Swansea City last time out, and Conte, who suffered his first defeat since taking over the club, admitted his team are too often guilty of complacency.
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The Netherlands midfielder joined the Reds this summer from Newcastle after scoring 11 times last season.
