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Another one down, another step nearer. Nothing was decided by this victory but some people seem to be seeing it as “the day the title was won”. I’m not sure why, to be honest. Remove the name of the opponent and the situation is just that we beat an average team at Anfield. Would the reaction have been the same if we’d beaten Palace or West Ham? No. But because it’s United we’ve got Gary Neville talking about the Salah goal as “the moment the title was decided”. That goal didn’t even decide the game as we’d won anyway. In terms of results that showed the title was heading to Anfield, this is way down the list for me and it’s giving United far too much credit to suggest that this was some kind of ‘signature win’. United are a mediocre team right now and to be completely honest I’m frustrated we didn’t beat them by more goals. I suppose City dropping two points the day before plays a part, but we’re miles ahead anyway and, funny as it was, I don’t think the Palace equaliser was especially significant. Hopefully City continue to drop points though just so we can wrap this up as soon as possible. It’s hilarious listening to Solksjaer trying to cling to little positives. “We did better than in the game here last year”. Not really. It was pretty much the same type of “please don’t hurt us” type of performance that we’re seeing from virtually every opponent we come across these days. In terms of what we’ve seen at Anfield of late, United’s display was slightly better than Sheffield United and significantly worse than Watford and Wolves. If they want to take some positive little crumbs from that, let them. I think it’s fucking hilarious. Ole is hilarious. He’s so deluded and so cheerful I just don’t have it in me to dislike him. He’s a funny guy. Like a clown. He amuses me. I mean come on, “They don’t carve you open” is an all time classic. The stuff about us being direct and playing a lot of long balls is 100% true, but to suggest we don’t carve teams open is embarrassing for him. Almost as embarrassing as his lowering of expectations and attempts to give himself credibility with claims like “it shows how much we’re respected that Man City didn’t rest players against us”. He’s like a little goblin faced Norwegian Hodgson. The long ball thing is interesting though. I think it was more of an observation than a dig, but ‘long ball’ has a stigma attached to it as it immediately makes you think Tony Pulis alehouse footy. The long ball has become a really useful weapon for us. Look at how we destroyed Everton with it for example. It’s been a definite ploy, especially this season, and it’s made us even more dangerous than we were before. Remember when we couldn’t break down the shit teams who just wanted to sit back? That doesn’t work anymore, because we’re constantly turning them around with balls over the top. It doesn’t even matter if it works. Just the threat of it is enough to stretch teams because they have to drop off. And when they drop off, Bobby can find space between the lines. Basically, we can hurt teams in every conceivable fashion now which makes us virtually unstoppable. We’ve scored in every single league game and now we’re not conceding any at the other end. We’re so fucking good now that ‘big’ teams are actually getting credit for not getting walloped and for having a ten minute spell where they looked alright. This was almost exactly like last week at White Hart Lane. United were marginally less cowardly than Spurs, I’ll give them that. But this was still men against boys and on another day the scoreline would have reflected that. I’ve never been less concerned about a game with United. I couldn’t have been any more relaxed about it beforehand. I expected us to not only beat them, but to embarrass them. To humiliate them. To slap them all over Anfield and put them in their place after they had the temerity to take points off us earlier in the season. The only reason that didn’t happen was some poor finishing, great goalkeeping and a VAR ref with ideas above his station. We dominated for forty minutes, had a bad five minute spell before the half and then came out flying after the break before we ended up having to just see it out for the last 15. I thought we started a little slowly but that may well have been down to United surprising us by pressing high up the field rather than just sitting back. I’m not sure we expected that, and it was a little uncomfortable at times seeing us playing out from the back and taking risks. We gave the ball away a few times but they weren’t good enough to do anything with it. Rashford not playing was a bad deal because he’s the only United player who I felt could have potentially hurt us. He’s their best player and he’s been carrying their whole team for weeks. No wonder his back is fucked. Once we adapted to what they were doing we took complete control. Virg powered in a header to give us the lead and Bobby should have made it two soon after but put his shot wide after being picked out by Mo. He did have the ball in the net shortly after and a finish of that quality deserved better than to be chalked off by VAR. That disallowed goal has genuinely irritated me, more because of the manner it was ruled out than the injustice of it not being a foul. Had Craig Pawson actually blown for a foul I’d have been ok with it as to me that was a call that could have gone either way. Virgil didn’t foul him but any time there’s contact with a keeper and he flaps at the ball, a whistle usually follows. So had the ref given it as a foul then no problem. Where the problem occurs is that the tit watching the video somehow decided that was a clear and obvious error. He’s perfectly entitled to look at that and think “I reckon it’s a foul”, but that’s not his remit. His job is to ask “is that a clear mistake by the referee?” and the fact is that it wasn’t. It was a subjective call that could have gone either way, so in that scenario they’re supposed to go with the decision on the field. The question I have is that given it wasn’t a clear error but it may have been a foul, why didn’t they just ask Pawson to take a look at it to see if he still felt the same way? Just say to him “that’s a 50-50 call that Craig, do you want to take a look to make sure you’re happy with it?”. If he takes a look and then decides he made a mistake, then fine, I’m good with that. The way it actually went down though was wrong. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t celebrate the ‘goal’ anyway. I mean, I stood up and applauded the brilliant finish, but I didn’t fully let myself go because even if the goal would have counted there was always first going to be a VAR check to see if Virg fouled De Gea. Bobby celebrated though, he’s not missing out on a chance to bring out the finger guns. A lot of teams would feel sorry for themselves after that but I looked at our lads and you would never have known that a major decision had gone against them. The body language right across the team was as though it had never happened. Even afterwards when Virg spoke about it he said “I didn’t think I fouled him but you have to go with what VAR says”. If that goal had stood I’m thoroughly convinced we’d have wiped the floor with United and scored four or five. We just needed that second goal to break their resistance and open the floodgates. We had the ball in the net again through the magnificent Wijnaldum, but he’d strayed an inch or two offside. The linesman flagged on that one so the celebrations were cut short immediately. Still, there was always the possibility he’d gotten it wrong and VAR would intervene. Sadly not. Mané should have scored after being released by Salah but his shot was too close to De Gea who saved with his foot. He saves more with his feet than he does with his hands, that prick. He’d been booked for his protests when Pawson had initially given the goal, and he’s lucky it was only a yellow considering how aggressive he was. Shame he’s not that aggressive when challenging for aerial balls, the fucking lightweight. It’s a source of immense frustration to me that the second goal didn’t come. Obviously winning is the main thing and I’m happy about that. I just think that one of the few things this team is yet to accomplish is to deliver the absolutely fucking mullering of United that’s been coming to them for a couple of seasons. The last five minutes of the half were sloppy and United enjoyed much more possession than they had previously. They didn’t do much with it and the only clear chance they had was when Wan-Bissaka stole in at the back post and his cross-shot was almost converted by Andreas. I thought Wan-Bissaka was offside anyway, but I haven’t seen any replays of it so I’m not sure. Andreas had a speculative shot from distance that Alisson saved comfortably but other than that Alisson’s goal was rarely threatened. They only had one chance in the second half too, which Martial bottled and smashed over the bar. I mentioned this last week, we’ve been lucky at times this season because other teams are getting chances but not taking them. It’s partly luck and partly the pressure opponents are under. Chances are few and far between against us so when they come there’s a greater pressure to convert. Martial buries that more often than not. That being said, we miss plenty of chances ourselves. The number of close games we’ve had this season is mainly due to an inability to kill teams off when we’re on top. It’s the one weakness we have. We’ve been wasteful on too many occasions. Frankly it was ridiculous that United were still in with a shout late on in this game. The start we made to the second half was blistering and should have been enough to blow them away. No-one can live with us when we do that and it’s a miracle United managed to survive that spell. Salah missed a sitter when he failed to convert a Robertson cross. Mané then fired over after being brilliantly found by Firmino. Hendo was denied by an incredible save by De Gea who somehow managed to tip his shot onto the post. Sadio then got in behind them but dragged his shot just past the post. It was an incredible sequence of play but United somehow managed to weather the storm. Klopp made his first chance when he sent on Lallana for Ox. I thought Ox had been decent without ever really making that much of a mark on the game. Lallana never got going though. He fell over the first time he got the ball and it took him a while to get with the pace of the game. Origi and Fabinho both came on late, replacing Mané and Bobby. Those changes were a response to the way the game had gone and the fact we were now on the back foot protecting a one goal lead. We’ve seen that before, with Mo sent through the middle for the counter attacking threat. It works well because we defend so resolutely and because Virgil seems to head away every ball that comes into the box. He won header after header and that’s the main difference between us now and us a few years ago when we would so often find it difficult to hold onto leads. Teams would just keep putting it in the mixer and eventually it would pay off. Now they do it and Van Dijk just heads it straight back out. Every. Time. He was imperious and I’m not going to argue with anyone who had him as man of the match. He wasn’t my choice, but he was flawless. Hendo got the award on Sky but he wasn’t my choice either, although it was a toss up between him and Wijnaldum. Gini gets it for me because in these big games he just nips off into the phonebox and changes into his Superman costume. In these high profile games he seems to become stronger, quicker and more skilful. It’s amazing to see and that’s why he just shades it for me. Robbo deserves a mention too just for the sheer amount of running he did. He was up and down the flank all day, whereas on the opposite side Trent was not the factor he normally would be. United clearly decided they were going to remove that threat and they packed that side of the field with two left backs and also had Martial hugging the left flank. Salah’s performance was the most interesting talking point I think. My feeling while watching the game was that once again he was having a stinker against United. On reflection, I completely over-stated that as he was a constant danger. Not everything he tried came off but he did create chances for others and he deserved his goal at the end just for his sheer persistence. It’s disappointing that once again we didn’t give them the beating they deserve but I’m not blaming anybody. It’s just one of those things. The ball didn’t break for us on the day and they rode their luck. If the second goal had come in the first hour, more would have followed. It didn’t come, and just like last week at Spurs it then becomes edgy. Not because of anything we’re doing, but just because the situation is precarious and the opponent then has to come out and have a go in the last 15 minutes. It’s happened loads of times this season but we defend really well and it’s not like we ever look as though we’re hanging on. There’s always the risk that they’ll get a flukey goal or someone will hammer one in from 30 yards though, so it makes for a stressful ending to the game. It felt edgy at the time but watching it back again United created virtually nothing late on despite dominating possession. We had them at arm’s length and wasted a couple of very good opportunities to kill them on the break. Eventually we got them though with the last kick of the game. What a moment that was. The more pragmatic thing for Alisson to have done once he claimed the ball was to keep hold of it and waste time. There were only seconds left after all. It just shows how alert he is though that he knew they’d thrown everyone forward and that Mo was all alone. It was the smart move to leather the ball up to him because even if it didn’t lead to a goal, the ball was going to end up deep in United’s half anyway. It did lead to a goal though. An iconic, live long in the memory type of goal. A David Ngog if you will. Ok, forget that, this was way more iconic than Ngog’s goal but it was similar in the way it was taken and the celebrations that followed. Credit to Salah because it was brilliantly taken. That really wasn’t easy because as good as the pass from Alisson was, Mo had to wait a second before gathering it and that slowed him down long enough to allow the lightning quick Dan James to get back at him. The way Mo just held him off and prevented him getting close enough to make a challenge was superb. The finish itself wasn’t great and I thought De Gea should have saved it, but everything else about that goal was glorious, including the celebration. Off came the shirt and out came the abs. As a rule, I’m not one for condoning the shirt off celebration as it just means a needless booking that might prove costly somewhere down the line. When it’s a last second goal at the Kop end against United though, then all bets are off. He could have taken his shorts off as well if he’d wanted and he’d get no criticism from me. It was funny seeing Alisson doing a Pepe Reina and arriving first on the scene for the celebrations. It’s even funnier when you watch the replay of him running and realise he wasn’t actually moving that fast, it’s just that everyone else was too exhausted to be arsed running to Mo. Alisson is gesturing “come on!” at them all as he runs past, and they’re all just standing around like “nah you’re alright, lad. We’re fucked”. Eventually I think he shamed them all into joining in. I looked at the rest of the players and a lot of them were seriously considering just staying in their own half as they were out on their feet. In the end they ambled over to join in at their own leisure. I’m running out of things to say about this season we’re having. The points total, the records being broken and the historic stuff we’re seeing. We’re almost over the line and it’s only January. It’s unprecedented what we’re seeing and it’s not about if we win the title now, it’s only a case of when we win it. The questions still to be answered are whether we can break the record for the most points and if we could go undefeated. I’m not thinking about either of those as there are so many games still to be played, and next up for us is the toughest fixture we have left. Yes, I’m saying Wolves away is a more difficult game for us than a trip to the Etihad. We know how to play against City and they fear us. Wolves don’t fear us and they’ll still be steaming about the perceived injustice they feel about their recent loss at Anfield. They’re a tough nut to crack when they face the better sides because it suits their counter attacking style. It’s a tough game and to me it’s the biggest threat remaining to our unbeaten record. The good thing is that it’s a Thursday so we have an extra day to prepare for it and we should be at full strength. I’m looking forward to it but I have more trepidation about this game than I’ve had all season. On a final note, I want to mention the atmosphere. It was great. The Kop was loud all day and I can only remember hearing the United fans once or twice all day. I could see from my seat that they were signing and making noise, but I genuinely couldn’t hear them because the noise from our crowd drowned them out. I think the new Main Stand may have changed the acoustics of the stadium too because I used to always be able to hear the away fans and what they were singing, but often this season I’ve barely heard a peep. The main reason though is the noise from our fans has increased. In some of the quieter games you can hear the away fans, but in the two games against United and Everton I’ve barely heard a peep. I can imagine the Mancs went through their full repertoire of scummy chants, but the only things I heard all day was “United” and “Always the victims”. The rest of their shite was completely drowned out by the Kop. Actually wait, I tell a lie. I did hear them giving it the “where’s your famous atmosphere” at one point, which is right up there with Solskjaer and his “they don’t carve you open”. It’s great, they’re completely deluded and have no idea just how far away they are from where they were. We’re back on our perch and there’s fuck all they can do about it now. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Oxlade-Chamberlain (Lallana); Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané (Fabinho):

Saturday Jan 11: Spurs 0 L 1 We were nowhere near our best today but we were still way better than sorry shithouse Spurs, who went out there just hoping not to get smacked around. Just because Mourinho said afterwards that they did well and deserved a point, a lot of people seem to have bought into it. They deserved nothing. They played like a plucky little underdog in the cup. I was embarrassed for them as they’ve always been able to go toe to toe with us since Klopp has been here. Now look at them. Pitiful. You know the great thing about our lads though? They won at Spurs but they were pissed off. You could see it. They were genuinely disappointed in themselves. Hendo was fuming afterwards and you could see him say to Klopp on the pitch “not good enough. That was fucking shit”. Virgil wasn’t happy either, and Klopp reckons when he went to congratulate Bobby he was met with “I know, I should have scored more. I’m sorry”. The standards they are setting for themselves are the reason that I’m so sure this title race is over. There’s just no way these lads are going to lose six or seven games. There’s more chance that the gap gets bigger rather than smaller. We’ve now officially had the best ever start in the history of the big five European leagues. What we’re seeing it truly historic shit. It’s literally never been done before. 20 wins from 21 games. Incredible stuff. We are a few months away from this team being the reigning champions of England, Europe and the World. Who’d have thought. Even just a couple of years ago it seemed well out of reach, but look at us now. The u18s won again too. They went behind int he first minute and Stoke but equalised before half time and won it with five minutes left. These boys love a late goal even more than the senior lads. Sunday Jan 12: City smash Villa into the middle of next week but Guardiola is still saying the title has gone and we’re too far ahead. Why do so many people think he’s just playing mind games here? Guardiola has a higher opinion of Klopp and his team than pretty much anybody in football. He’s always talking about how good we are, and he was doing it before we were even challenging them. So now he finds himself 14 points behind having played a game more. Of course he thinks it’s over, why wouldn’t he? It isn’t mind games, he just knows how good we are because we matched them stride for stride last season when they had to be absolutely perfect over the last few months to hold us off. He knows they aren’t clawing back a 17 point deficit. Nat Phillips is going back to finish his loan spell in Germany. He’s probably never going to play for us again but what a cool story he’s got to tell, cutting short a loan spell to come back and help us beat Everton, before then giving it the arl Josemi “and now my work here is done”. Great stuff. Almost as great as this story from a London journalist about Berbatov from yesterday… "Dimitar Berbatov came into the media cafe at Spurs about 10 minutes before kick off, looking for food. Grabbed a roll, but the catering manager came over and asked him where his pre-match meal voucher was (all media get given them). "While his colleague argued his case, having taken one himself, explaining who the Bulgarian was, Berbatov casually buttered his roll, stuffed the whole thing into his mouth and stood in front of the woman with it hanging half out as if to say 'what you going to do about it now?' "This sent the catering manager to a new level of outrage at this Bulgarian and his devil may care attitude. While she raged, Berbatov simply smiled with buttered roll still hanging out of his mouth before walking out of the room. Dimitar Berbatov - doing what he wants since 1981." Meanwhile, Fabinho says he wants to welcome his mate Mbappe to Liverpool. You and me both, son. You and me both. Monday Jan 13: Some spectacular footy played by the 23s tonight in a 5-0 win against Southampton. Sensational stuff, especially from the skipper Jones. He’s far too good for this level now and the opposition usually can’t get near him. I know it’s tough with the number of senior lads ahead of him, but we need to get him some minutes, somehow, because he’s special. Elliott and Williams were both class again too, as was Pedro. The new lad up front scored a couple and if this is going to be the regular line up for the 23s now they’re going to be fun to watch for the rest of the season. The midfield has been revamped now with Christie-Davies going out on loan. The trio that played tonight are very easy on the eye. Pedro, Clarkson and Cain are all brilliant in possession Tell you what really grabbed my attention though. Hoever was only on the bench. Maybe there’s a fitness reason for that, or perhaps a message is being sent. He started the season on the brink of the senior squad. He was Trent’s deputy and also an option at centre back. Recently though he’s been nowhere near. He didn’t make the team against Everton and now he’s not making the starting line up for the 23s. International duty has fucked his season right up. He was brilliant for Holland in those youth tournaments but while he was away Neco was flying past him in the pecking order and now he can’t get in at centre back ahead of Van den Berg and Boyes. Tuesday Jan 14: So, a report reveals that Everton have lost a shit load of cash over the last 12 months. £110m in losses or something. Serious shit. They had their AGM tonight and Moshiri didn’t show up. Why? Because he was having a really important meeting with someone who wants to invest in naming rights to their new stadium. Fuck me, not even Evertonians are gullible enough to not see through this shit, surely? Hold on, it’s actually true. Kind of. The investor is his mate Uzmanov (long rumoured to have an unofficial stake in the Blues) and he’s paying £30m just to be given first refusal on the naming rights to the phantom new stadium. Jesus, that’s so fucking blatant even Man City will be looking at that and going ‘dunno about that lads, it’s a bit obvious like’. You know, FFP may as well just be fucked off completely now because teams aren’t playing by the rules and unless you’re an Italian club there seems to be no punishment for it. Actually that’s not strictly true as Championship sides have been hammered in the past too, and Derby are currently looking at a potential 12 point punishment after their chairman bought the stadium for more than it was worth and rented it back to the club. I genuinely don’t get how Everton are being allowed to get away with what they’ve been doing. They lost £110m and yet they’re still throwing all that cash at Ancelotti? If FFP is ever actually enforced in the Premier League, then Man City will be reigniting their rivalry with Macclesfield in League One and Everton will be there right alongside them, blaming that whole shit on us. Wednesday Jan 15: Suarez is out for four months after needing knee surgery. He was indestructible when he was here but age is catching up with him now. Shame for him, but at least it means there’s no chance of him having his heart broken by us again. I really, really hope we get to play them again you know. This time it might be worth playing the FA Cup side just to make it a bit more fair. So the AFCON next year will be back to taking place in the winter. I’m sure there’s some perfectly simple explanation for it, and it will be something to do with FIFA acting in their own self interest. Loads of Reds are up in arms about it because it means no Mo, Sadio or Naby for possibly as long as six weeks. At this point I’m not arsed. It’s so far ahead that frankly next season isn’t something that concerns me at all. I just want that title this year and I’ll worry about anything else afterwards. I’ve long felt that once we win that title I’m not even going to care about what comes next because I just want the monkey off our back. No doubt I’ll feel a lot differently when we’re playing a dozen games with Mané and Salah though. As for Naby, it’s no better than even money that he’d be available to play for us anyway as he must have missed as many games as he’s been available for. I suppose another part of the reason I’m not stressing about this is because I figure that Bobby and Mbappe can hold down the fort until they return anyway. Thursday Jan 16 Roma want Shaq and have had a loan offer turn down. What the fuck is it with Italian clubs and their loan offers? There’s no way we’d be letting Shaq go anyway while there is so much to play for, but they could at least make us an offer that might make us consider it. If they’d come in and offered £30m then who knows. It’s just mad though isn’t it? Why would we let any first team squad member go on loan? What the fuck are they even thinking? It’s actually annoyed the shit out of me to be honest. These fuckers tried to the same shit with Lovren last summer and have clearly learnt nothing. Even Inter Milan are paying actual cash to sign soon to be out of contract 53 year old Ashley Young, so where do Roma get off trying to insult us like this? In other news today, apparently UEFA changed the formation of their ‘team of the year’ just so they could get Ronaldo in. It was meant to be 4-3-3- but Ronaldo was the fourth striker in the voting, so they went 4-2-4 and dropped Ngolo Kante. It’s really not that big of a deal but it is completely baffling to me how Ronaldo needs to be cow towed to like this. He’s had a great career and won a shit tonne of awards both individually and collectively. All things come to an end though. Ronaldo is 35 in a few weeks. I’d say he is undoubtedly the best 35 year old to ever play the game, but Father Time is undefeated and eventually he’ll get Ronaldo too. Why are UEFA so arsed about it though? What do they think is going to happen if he doesn’t make their ‘Team of the Year’? It’s just fucking weird. Meanwhile, Phil Babb thinks we should sign Koulibaly to play alongside Big Virg because it’s the only position where we might actually need strengthening. Initially I rolled my eyes when I saw that, but in fairness to Babb he said his concern was just with the fitness records of Gomez, Matip and Lovren, and he’s right on that score. The problem is what do you do when everyone is fit? If we signed Koulibaly, presumably it would be at the expense of Lovren who would move on, which is fine, but where would that leave Gomez? He could be our centre back for the next dozen years, so why replace him with someone who will play every week? Because Koulibaly is currently better than Joe, but if Joe is playing every week (or at least most weeks) then he’s quickly going to become one of the best around. If we paired Koulibaly with Van Dijk we might never concede a goal again, and it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. Besides, we need that money for Mbappe. Friday Jan 17: Why is it any time we play the Mancs or Bueshite, we’re subjected to those God awful ‘Combined XI’ things? At least in the past there was a discussion to be had, but but not any more. Even Dave Prentice couldn’t find room for one Everton player in his line up, but ESPN somehow managed to sneak Maguire and Rashford in theirs. Rashford is United’s best player but he got in ahead of Mo Salah. I mean seriously? You can make a case that he could edge Divock out of a spot on the bench, but that’s it. Rashford over Salah is fucking crazy talk. As for Maguire? What’s that based on? Price tag, presumably, because he hasn’t pulled up any trees since going there and there are actually video compilations of his individual performances that are doing the rounds online just ripping the piss out of him. Picking him over Lovren is laughable. Taking him over Matip is embarrassing. Going with him over Joey G is fucking criminal. He’s better than Phil Jones though, I’ll give him that. Finally, the u23s lost 3-0 at Wigan tonight. Shite it was. They were well beaten and I switched off before the end as it was doing my head in. The defence looked awful and the attack was toothless without Elliott and Jones. I’m struggling to see what they saw in Van den Berg because he doesn’t even look as good a player as Morgan Boyes right now. Need to have faith though as we haven’t got too many transfers wrong in the last couple of years, and he is still a kid. ...and that was the week that was

Trent Alexander-Arnold says that the team was made to show their fighting qualities but were well worth their 2-0 victory against Man United at Anfield on Sunday.After a goal in the first 15 minutes by Virgil Van Dijk coming from a pin-point corner from the 21 year-old, it appeared that the Reds were in the mood to put their bitter rivals to the sword.But despite carving out a fair share of chances, the scoreline stayed the same until second half injury time when Mo Salah finished superbly after a sublime clearance from Alisson.Alexander-Arnold is sure to be one of the key men for England this summer, and if you like England's chances then you should take advantage of some of these euro 2020 sign up offers. Speaking to the Official site after the game the right-back said it was a deserved victory.“I think it was well deserved from us. “They never had many clear-cut chances, we should have scored more than two goals but to get that goal at the end was the icing on the cake really – especially the fashion we did it.“Ali getting the assist which is unbelievable. “There’s comparisons with one we scored [against United] about 10 years ago and then he’s ran up and celebrated like Pepe Reina did! “So yeah, it was a good way to end the game.”However Alexander-Arnold said that there were things that they could improve on.“They obviously came to defend really and it was hard to break them down, but we created chances. Obviously we got the set-piece goal quite early on which helped us, scored a few that were ruled out in the first half and then should have finished the game off early in the second half. We were all over them for 10 minutes, they couldn’t get out, and obviously we’re disappointed with that because putting it to bed earlier then you’re not nervous near the end of the game. “That’s something that we obviously need to improve on a little bit.” The England international also discussed the impact of Van Dijk at set-pieces“He’s probably one of the, if not the, most prolific centre-halves in the league and to have someone like that, who is going into the box and putting his head on the end of things is fantastic“I think he’s showed that he’s probably the best centre-half in the world over the last 18 months and he showed that again today.“His defensive work probably goes a bit unnoticed because we’re so used to seeing it but you can’t take it for granted. "He's always there in the right places, the amount of headers he was getting out the box for us, winning headers off corners, is priceless for us.”