Liverpool and Manchester City ended up being a nail-biting 1-1 draw in the Premier League. The match will be remembered as Erling Haaland became the fastest to score 50 goals in the league. Soon after the game, a pundit publicly held Virgil Van Dijk responsible for letting the Norway striker score the opening goal in the match.
Initially, the Reds did look subpar in terms of quality at the start of the match. But they managed to pull the game back in the second half to secure a point for themselves in the important clash.
ESPN pundit Steve Nicol feels that the Reds’ defensive duo made mistakes. He said, “Allison’s unfortunate with his clearance. It goes to Ake who does well in getting the ball to Haaland. But you got to have a look at Matip and Van Dijk. How can you let a guy, I mean this guy’s a monster. But it almost felt as though he was invisible and nobody saw him, nobody picked him up”. Jurgen Klopp will also certainly have a look at the Haaland goal.
Manchester City made the most of the opportunity. Erling Haaland and the rest of his teammates would have felt that they deserved to win the game. Mainly because Manchester City had more of the possession stats with a 60-40% gap. However, the brilliant finish of Trent Alexander Arnold ensures that the Reds didn’t leave empty-handed.
The media and experts also built up the match as a battle between Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah. After the Norwegian scored a goal, Manchester City’s defense did well to restrict the opportunities for the Egyptian. It was an awkwardly quiet game for Mohamed Salah.
However, the battle is not over between the two. Mohamed Salah is 4 goals behind Norwegian in the top goal-scoring list this season. Erling Haaland has 14. Whereas, the Liverpool icon has scored 10. However, the headlines obviously belong to the Manchester City star striker after he comprehensively broke the 50-goal record in the Premier League.