Mohamed Salah impressed off the bench on his return to the Liverpool team in a comfortable 2-0 win over Brighton as Hugo Ekitike’s double took the champions up to sixth in the Premier League.
Salah, restored to the squad after talks with head coach Arne Slot on Friday, was introduced earlier than expected, replacing the injured Joe Gomez after 26 minutes, and Anfield greeted him with big cheers, any ill-feeling over his interview at Leeds last week forgotten.
Ekitike scored twice for the second game running, but it was the performance of Salah, in his final appearance for Liverpool before leaving for AFCON with Egypt, that this game will be remembered for.
Hugo Ekitike leaps to head Liverpool into a 2-0 lead against Brighton
Salah set up Ekitike’s towering header with a corner in the second half, ending a run of three league games without a goal involvement, and nearly ended a torrid week with the perfect ending, but could not find the back of the net late in the game with his side 2-0 up.
Liverpool were already in front when Salah came on after Ekitike scored the fastest goal of the Premier League season with just 46 seconds on the clock. Gomez had pounced on a poor Yankubah Minteh clearance to tee up the Frenchman, now up to 10 Liverpool goals.
Brighton’s Diego Gomez failed to convert two big chances to equalise either side of the break and was fortunate still to be on the pitch for the second, a sitter at the back post, having survived a VAR check for a high challenge on Florian Wirtz.
Liverpool made a potentially difficult afternoon look easy as they extended their unbeaten run in all competitions to five games to overtake Brighton in the table as they drop down to ninth after a third game without a win.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: skynews.com
