Marco Silva described the first two goals scored against his Fulham side in Liverpool’s dramatic 4-3 win on Sunday as ‘world-class’.
The Reds twice took the lead in the first half, only to be pegged back by the Cottagers both times. The away side later hit the front before a brace of goals in a manic 80-second period near the end of normal time ensured a comeback victory for Jurgen Klopp’s team.
The 46-year-old felt that his outfit deserved ‘more’ than a gallant defeat but was awestruck by the quality of LFC’s first two goals, a Trent Alexander-Arnold free kick (which in truth is his despite it being officially credited as a Bernd Leno own goal) and a long-distance thunderbolt by Alexis Mac Allister.
Silva told Fulham’s official website afterwards: “This afternoon, the way they scored the goals, the first two were world class – a free-kick and that great, great goal from Mac Allister. It’s not easy to do something against these types of situations. These goals aren’t something that happen often.”
It felt as if Liverpool’s players were trying to upstage one another to win the club’s goal of the month contest, such was the quality of all four netted by the Reds.
The first-half strikes from Trent and Mac Allister were just rewards for overall superb performances which saw them complete 99 passes altogether (66 and 33 respectively), win six duels (four and two) and complete nine accurate long balls (eight and one), via Sofascore.
While statistics such as the home side dominating the shot count by 26-9 and the xG battle by 2.23 to 1.21 (Sofascore) would suggest that they were good value for their ultimate triumph, Fulham still posed more than enough problems for Silva to reasonably claim that his team could well have gone back to London with a result.
It took four spectacular goals from Liverpool to preserve their 100% record at Anfield this season, even if Klopp must privately be wishing that he’d probably rather have four Dirk Kuyt-esque tap-ins in a comfortable 4-0!
#Ep96 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones🎙️
Good value win for us there. I think we not that clinical in front of goals. We deserved more than that four. The chance we had was too much and just to come up with 4 is under statement because of how we dominated. And why do we give our opponents room to move with the and fulham would have beaten us if they took their chances.