Jurgen Klopp commended a “world-class” Mohamed Salah, who scored his 50th Premier League goal during Liverpool’s epic 4-3 victory over Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n
Salah bagged a brace at Anfield to make it 50 strikes in 72 matches which is the same as former Red Fernando Torres, an out-and-out striker. The Egyptian’s record has only been bettered by Ruud van Nistelrooy, Andy Cole and Alan Shearer.<\/p>\n
“Exceptional achievement from a world-class player,” said Klopp.<\/p>\n
“Wow, an outstanding number. I heard the names of the other players who got there a bit quicker – Alan Shearer, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Andy Cole – good strikers as well eh?<\/p>\n
“Maybe he would have scored more and earlier if I hadn’t played him on the right wing so often. My fault.<\/p>\n
“But no, not bad. (He has) helped us a lot. It’s a typical win-win situation. He benefits from the style of play, and the boys benefit of course from his scoring desire. It’s cool.”<\/p>\n
Klopp also praised the character of his players after bouncing back from Andros Townsend’s opening goal and then recovering again when James Tomkins made it 2-2 with 25 minutes to go.<\/p>\n
However, they still needed to survive a manic conclusion which saw James Milner sent off for a second bookable offence on Wilfried Zaha before Sadio Mane and Eagles substitute Max Meyer traded goals.<\/p>\n
Asked if he thought it was chaotic, Klopp said: “Oh yes. Someone asked me what was the main feeling, the main emotion at the final whistle. It was relief.<\/p>\n
“I have known the boys since 2015 and I have found boys with outstanding character.<\/p>\n
“It’s not the first time this season we had to do it, but today it was pretty special and I really liked it.”<\/p>\n
Victory extended their lead at the top of the table to seven points for 24 hours at least with Manchester City at Huddersfield on Sunday – a game you can listen to live on talkSPORT, kick-off 1.30pm.<\/p>\n
It also set two new club records. Their points tally of 60 after 23 matches beats their 59 points in 1893-94 and 1987-88.<\/p>\n
The other landmark was for the Premier League only: a 32nd consecutive unbeaten home league match – coincidentally Palace were the last team to win at Anfield in the league in April 2017.<\/p>\n
Only between 1978 to 1980 – (63) matches – have they had a longer run.<\/p>\n
Palace boss Roy Hodgson, returning to the club where he had an ill-fated six months in charge in 2010, felt they should have had more from the game.<\/p>\n
“For large periods of the game we held our own but you need a bit of luck if you’re going to win,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Goals often have an element of luck involved in them and their three certainly had a bit more luck in them than ours did.<\/p>\n
“I’m very happy with how we went about our business and I’m very disheartened for the players that they didn’t get more to show for their efforts.”<\/p>\n
Hodgson refused to blame 39-year-old goalkeeper Julian Speroni on his first start since December 2017 for his handling error which gave Liverpool the lift they needed at 3-2.<\/p>\n
“A goalkeeper comes back after not having played for a year and a bit (but) there aren’t many better club servants than Julian Speroni at any football club in the world,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jurgen Klopp commended a “world-class” Mohamed Salah, who scored his 50th Premier League goal during Liverpool’s epic 4-3 victory over Crystal Palace. Salah bagged a brace at Anfield to make it 50 strikes in 72 matches which is the same as former Red Fernando Torres, an out-and-out striker. The Egyptian’s record has only been bettered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}