Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah were on song as Liverpool crushed Arsenal in the Premier League at the Emirates Stadium in North London.
Liverpool looked like the champion side that won the league last season in an impressive display in Islington as they hammered Mikel Arteta’s Gunners for 3 goals to move within 2 points of a top 4 berth.
Jurgen Klopp’s side knew that they could close the gap to Chelsea in 4th with a win after the Blues suffered a shock 5-2 home defeat to relegation-battling West Bromwich Albion earlier in the day.
This was Liverpool’s fifth win in six visits at London clubs, barring the one draw they had against Fulham. The defending champions have had an extremely difficult season after winning the league last time around for the first time in the club’s history.
Liverpool were absolutely dominant from the get-go and it was just a matter of time before they found the back of Bernd Leno’s net. Klopp needed some inspiration off the bench to get the goal, however, and it was the Portuguese man Diogo Jota who made the difference yet again for the Reds.
Three minutes after coming on, Jota thumped home a header from a delightful Trent Alexander-Arnold cross to give the champions the lead as Arsenal were finally split open.
Trent Alexander-Arnold put in a man-of-the-match performance against Arsenal (Photo by Visionhaus/Getty Images)
Jota has been a fantastic signing for Liverpool and he showed why once again. Egypt‘s Mo Salah made it 2-0 as he continued his quest for yet another Premier League golden boot, just 4 minutes after Jota opened the scoring.
There was no coming back from this for the Gunners who failed to test Alisson in Liverpool’s goal. Jota added a third to make things worse for a lost Arsenal to cap off a truly scintillating display by the team from Merseyside.
Arteta was pretty distraught after the game and said, “We need to apologise to our fans – the standard was nowhere near what we want. I am fully responsible. We were extremely poor. When you don’t do the basics, you don’t have a chance to compete. We looked tired but it was more of a mental issue. We didn’t win enough duels and we gave away so many easy balls. It’s very frustrating – a big shock to the system.”
Liverpool manager, on the other hand, was as animated as ever saying, “This was a very important statement from us. We have to win our games and make pressure [on the top four] and that’s what we did here.
“We have to fight and we will fight and that is the statement for us and nobody else.”
Liverpool face a challenge against Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals next before playing Jack Grealish and Aston Villa on the weekend.
Arsenal, on the other hand, face Slavia Prague in the UEFA Europa League quarterfinals before hosting bottom of the table Sheffield United in the Premier League.
