By OkayGoal
Liverpool won 3-1 at Crystal Palace on Sunday, with Alexis Mac Allister, Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak scoring and Alisson Becker producing the saves that kept Pierre Sage’s side out when the game was still there to be won.
Eddie Nketiah’s penalty in the fifth minute of stoppage time was only a consolation for Crystal Palace, who drop to the bottom of the Premier League on seven points from ten games. They have now lost four league matches in a row.
For Liverpool, it ends a run of back-to-back defeats, the first of Andoni Iraola’s time in charge. They go into the international break fourth on 18 points, three behind Manchester City and four behind second-placed Brighton.
How did Liverpool win at Selhurst Park?
Not by being the better side in the first half, that much is clear. Palace started brightly and moved the ball quickly around the Liverpool box, with Yeremy Pino and Tyrick Mitchell combining well down the left. On 18 minutes Mitchell’s cross was flicked up by Pino, whose rising left-footed drive beat Alisson and came back off the crossbar.
Jorgen Strand Larsen, leading the line with Jean-Philippe Mateta suspended, then had a shot deflected wide and saw a cheeky chip over Alisson ruled out for offside after a VAR check. Moments later Mitchell picked out Daichi Kamada at the far post, and his sweetly struck volley needed an outstanding fingertip save from Alisson to keep it out.
Then came the sucker punch. Five minutes before the break, Dominik Szoboszlai swung in a free-kick from wide and Mac Allister, unmarked at the near post, glanced it past Dean Henderson. Palace felt the free-kick should never have been given. Adam Wharton had a header saved before half-time, and Ronald Araujo somehow failed to put away a six-yard chance at the other end.
Wirtz finally gets his league goal
Nine minutes after the restart Liverpool had their second. Bradley Barcola raced down the right and pulled the ball back to the penalty spot, and Wirtz swept home first time. It was his first Premier League goal of the season, and Isak’s run to the near post, which dragged defenders away, made it.
Isak was denied one-on-one by Henderson late on, but got his goal in the 89th minute. Victor Munoz broke at pace and found Wirtz, who laid it on for Isak, and his shot took a deflection over the Palace goalkeeper. It is his seventh league goal of the season.
Nketiah, who had skewed a good chance over in the 77th minute, then scored from the spot after Milos Kerkez was penalised for a foul on Dario Osorio.
Alisson back to his best after Istanbul
This was the most pleasing part of the afternoon for Iraola. Alisson Becker was at fault for two of the goals in the 3-2 defeat at Fenerbahce in midweek, and this has been the worst season of his Anfield career for save percentage. At Selhurst Park, he looked like the old Alisson again.
As well as the Kamada save, he stopped Wharton’s header at full stretch and, with 15 minutes left, came racing out to block from Pino after Osorio had set him up. Liverpool supporters voted him the club’s player of the match, his first of the season.
Iraola said: “Very pleased, very pleased because I think not just the save in the first half especially was very good. The last one, with the 2-0 already against Yeremy Pino, I think, in the one-on-one situation. Just that he’s commanded the box very well.”
He also pointed to the save as the turning point: “I think in the first half the game was quite open, chances for both teams, and I think there is a save from Alisson that is key for us.”
Why was Iraola upset at the end?
Because of the penalty. Liverpool’s head coach admitted it changed nothing, but he wanted the clean sheet. “Probably upset a little bit at the end with the penalty. Very upset, I would say, because I know it doesn’t change anything, it’s in the 94th minute or whatever, but I’m upset because a clean sheet is expensive,” he said.
Henderson, Palace’s captain, did not seem convinced by the decision either, telling Sky Sports: “It’s probably not a penalty, but if you get something like that in the first-half, it obviously changes the game completely.”
Crystal Palace 1-3 Liverpool: what Sage said
Sage made four changes from the 1-1 draw with Hoffenheim on Thursday, bringing back Axel Disasi, Jefferson Lerma, Oscar Mingueza and Strand Larsen. His side were the better team for long spells of the first half, and he felt they were punished for leaving space once they had to chase the game.
“With 1-0 for them, we opened the space because we had to come back to the score and we had to push. And we let a lot of space and with their speed they killed us in transitions,” Sage told his post-match press conference.
He added: “A lot of times I’ve said ‘we deserved better today’. I think today it was the case too. But you know, football is not about what you deserve. It’s about how efficient you are and we have a lack of efficiency offensively and defensively.”
The pressure on Sage was already building before kick-off, with Palace linked with England assistant Anthony Barry. Sage admitted the performance alone is no longer enough: “The performance was better today, but if we were in a more comfortable situation, we can build on this kind of thing. But now we have to take points and it was not the case today.”
Henderson: “We’ll come roaring back”
Henderson blamed set-pieces, which he called the side’s “Achilles’ heel”, and the counter-attacks for the defeat. “We’ve been done by, I think, three counter-attacks really, which is tough to take,” he said. “We’ve got to stick together as a group at times like this. Togetherness is key, and we’ll come roaring back.”
Nketiah’s penalty was at least Palace’s first league goal in four games, after they had failed to score in their previous three defeats. They visit Coventry on 21 November, with Mateta still suspended.
Szoboszlai knee worry before the international break
The one cloud for Liverpool is Szoboszlai, who set up the opener and was one of their best players, but picked up a knee problem late in the first half and was replaced by Trey Nyoni after 69 minutes.
Iraola is worried about losing him to Hungary duty. “I think he extended a little bit the knee, it was fine, but not 100 per cent, so he has to be careful to see if he can play with the national team or not,” he said. “Last time, in the international break, we lost three very important players, so now I’m praying, it’s the last thing we need.”
Liverpool made five changes from Istanbul, as we expected in our Liverpool predicted lineup vs Crystal Palace, with Araujo and Kerkez back in defence. Their 13 points from five away games is the most in the division and, according to Opta, ties the club record for the first five away league games of a season. Home form is a different story after the 1-0 home defeat to Arsenal, and Manchester United are next up at Anfield in a fortnight.
Verdict: Alisson won this as much as the forwards did
Liverpool scored three, and Wirtz finally got the goal his displays have deserved. But the result turned on the half-hour spell when Palace were on top. Had Kamada’s volley gone in, this is a very different afternoon, and Liverpool would be heading into the break on three straight defeats.
For Palace, the worrying part is that Sage is right. They played well and still lost, and bottom of the table after ten games, the board will care far more about the points than the performances.