Draw with City gives Liverpool title hopes
Trent Alexander-Arnold rescued a point for Liverpool at the Ethihad Stadium a ‘morale-boosting’ point that gives them a rope to climb for the title as striker Darwin Nunez had to be pulled away from Man City coach, Pep Guardiola as the two had a verbal spat at the end of the encounter.
With the result Liverpool are a point behind City and it looks like a long hard season for the Premier League defending champions. Erling Haaland had opened the scoring, squeezing the ball past Alisson Becker, to become the first player to reach 50 goals in a very short period.
But in the 80th minute Alexander-Arnold found his way around the edge of the City box and superbly arrowed a right-footed effort into the bottom corner past Ederson.
“For sure [it’ll boost us], we’ve played a lot better against Man City here before and lost so it’s a good result for us,” the defender said. “It’s something we needed as a team and it’ll instil that belief in us that we can go up against a team that won the treble last year that are on top of the league. It shows we’re doing something right.
“I just don’t think we played particularly well to be honest, especially in the first half. Their formation and setup really challenged us and they had a lot of bodies in there which was difficult to deal with but we regrouped at halftime, came back out with more of a game plan and pressed them.
Guardiola was having the normal end of game exchange with Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, when Nunez suddenly appeared to exchange greetings with the City boss, but some words were said and tempers were high. But Klopp swiftly intercepted the encounter and dragged Nunez away to relative safety before the situation could escalate further.