As I’ve argued repeatedly over the previous year, if Daniel Sturridge is played regularly in his preferred role (Centre-Forward), he will deliver the goods, and he once again proved that emphatically during Liverpool’s 4-1 humbling of Premier League champions Leicester. I don’t play. It was the same at Arsenal.
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The Foxes fell 4-1 at Anfield as the hosts celebrated the opening of the redeveloped Main Stand with a devastating performance.
A brace from Roberto Firmino and goals from Sadio Mane and Adam Lallana sealed an impressive victory for the Merseyside outfit against last season’s surprise package.
The Premier League champions were handed a glimmer of hope just before half-time when Jamie Vardy took advantage of Lucas’s awful back pass. “Still we fought, but Liverpool were the better team”.
“The first match at home, a new stand and I think we started normally but after the first goal we lost our composure and they played so, so well”. I didn’t speak about the goal we conceded, I spoke about the reaction we showed after the goal – that made no sense.
The Reds boss praised the noise created by Liverpool supporters throughout the 90 minutes, but did ask them to refrain from singing his name when a match still hangs in the balance.
Mane said that the supporters played “a very good part” for the players and “helped” them “through the hard times” in the match, adding that they are “very happy with that” and saluted the fans for being with them “until the end of the season”. “We deserved to lose”.
The white nets will remain in place at Anfield for the rest of the 2016-17 season – and hopefully the four goals scored against the current Premier League champions on Saturday is a sign of things to come.
“I am really on the side of the players”. “But it’s not only one or two players”.
“We are always compact, reactive, but we lost the first ball, the second ball”. I know it doesn’t sound too smart, but sorry. “We arrive tonight in Leicester and tomorrow morning we will check and will see what happened”.
Leicester, though, have little time to dust themselves down with the club making their debut in the Champions League at Brugge on Wednesday. We have to clean our mind.
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Though Liverpool have acquitted themselves reasonably well against the big boys over the first month or so of the season, Chelsea will be a different proposition, and the manager knows it. Arsenal and Tottenham are opponents who can typically be expected to play football rather than seek to frustrate.
