Short Summary:
Liverpool 3-1 Norwich City.
Played at Anfield Stadium Liverpool England
Goals scored for Liverpool were: Sadio mane assisted by Konstantinos Tsimikas, Mo Salah assisted by Alisson Becker and Luis Diaz assisted by Jordan Henderson.
Goal scored for Norwich were: Miiot Rashica assisted by Joshua Sargent.
Review of the match:
Liverpool meet Norwich City once again in the premier league this season after beating them 3-0 at Carrow Road back in August. After a great victory over Inter Milan in midweek in Milan Italy, Jurgen Klopp decided to make seven changes to the Liverpool line-up to freshen things up as we continue on our heavily schedule of games as we continue to fight on in four different competitions this season. Norwich City’s season hasn’t been great but has their performances have improve since Daniel Farke was sacked and replace by Dean Smith who in my opinion shouldn’t have gotten sacked at Aston Villa earlier this season as he should have been given more time to balance out the Villa Squad after a heavy summer transfer window.
Liverpool started this game slowly and it was Norwich who started the game brightly and could have been ahead at half time it if wasn’t for once again the fantastic Liverpool GK Alisson who has proven every penny of money that we spend on to bring him to Liverpool from Roma a couple of seasons ago. I thought that by playing Joe Gomez at right-back we lost a bit of attack that we usual get from our star right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold and that in the summer an equally good right-back is needed in my opinion to be a good back-up to Trent Alexander-Arnold. The best chances that Liverpool had in the first half was a shot by Diaz on his left foot which just went over the Norwich box. The other great chance in the first half for Liverpool fell to Tsimikas who shot with his left foot and the full-back slid into the box but his shot with the ball went over the bar from five yards out.
In the second half, Norwich started again brighter than Liverpool and went ahead on the 48th minute when a shot by Rashica from the edge of the Liverpool box took an massive deflection off Joel Matip and went pass the opposite corner of the goal and Alisson couldn’t do anything about it so 1-0 to Norwich. After this goal, the pattern of the game continues for about 10 mins with Liverpool not having an edge on their attacks and also Norwich defending very well when Liverpool did attack so Klopp decided on the 62nd minute to make a double change and these changes would make the difference in the game.
Origi and Thiago came on for Keita and Oxlade-Chamberlain and Liverpool switch from 4-3-3 to an 4-2-3-1 otherwise a 4-2-4 in an effort to get back into the game and on the 64th minute it had worked as Liverpool equalized when am set-piece led to Tsimikas headed the ball down to Mane who tried the overhead kick again and unlike in Milan where it didn’t work, it work on this Saturday afternoon in Liverpool and the Norwich GK couldn’t do a thing about it so 1-1 after 65 mins of the game.
After this goal for Liverpool, the pace and pattern of the game change from Norwich being in the game to it being all Liverpool and eventually it would lead to another goal for Liverpool with Salah getting his 150th goal for Liverpool after a great kick of the ball from Alisson and he slides past the Norwich GK and sliding the ball with his right foot into the goal to make it 2-1 to Liverpool. The icing on the cake in this game was a first goal in Liverpool colors for January marquee signing Luis Diaz who bite his time to get into the right place for the Liverpool Captain Jordan Henderson to slide a great ball to Diaz’s feet and he clipped the ball over the body of the Norwich GK to make it 3-1 to Liverpool and with that another three points on the board for Liverpool. This victory was important for Liverpool’s season and it became an even more important victory when Manchester city lost 3-2 to Tottenham and those results for both Liverpool and Man City means there is only six points between the two clubs in the title race and not if but when Liverpool beat Leeds United this coming Wednesday evening then it will be only three points between the top two in the premier league and it will also mean that the title race would be officially back on for Liverpool.
Summary of the teams’ line-ups:
Liverpool: Alisson, Gomez, Matip, Van Dijk, Tsimikas, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Keita, Henderson, Mane, Salah, Diaz
Bench: Kelleher, Fabinho, Origi, Konate, Thiago, Milner, Minamino, Robertson, Elliott.
Subs Used: Origi for Keita, Thiago for Oxlade-Chamberlain, Minamino for Diaz.
Norwich City: Gunn, Max Aarons, Grant Hanley, Ben Gibson, Brandon Williams, Billy Gilmour, Mathias Normann, Kenny McLean, Sargent, Rashica, Teemu Pukki.
Bench: Michael McGovern, Sam Byram, Christoph Zimmermann, Ozan Kabak, Dimitrios Giannoulis, Pierre Lees-Melou, Przemyslaw Placheta, Kieran Dowell, Jonathan Rowe
Subs Used: Placheta for Sargent, Lees-Melou for Normann, Rowe for Rashica.
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