Liverpool blew Bayer Leverkusen right back to the Bundesliga with a 4-0 Champions League win that was created by an almighty second-half display.
Xabi Alonso’s Anfield return was an emotional thing, and the home crowd showed the Spaniard, who won the Champions League with Liverpool as a player, the utmost respect. Don’t forget, in an alternate reality, Alonso may well be Jurgen Klopp’s successor.
Slow starts have been a recurrent theme this season and last, but Liverpool have a masterful tactician in their dugout and tweaked away at the interval to command total authority over the German champions, blitzing through them.
So many wonderful performances: Virgil van Dijk was redoubtable in defence; Ryan Gravenberch, invariably brilliant under Arne Slot, was immense again.
In attack, Mohamed Salah turned creator as he can do so well in his present iteration, chalking up two for his teammates. That’s nine goals and nine assists apiece from 16 matches in 2024/25, thank you very much.
Cody Gakpo scored, but it was Luis Diaz, the hat-trick hero, who’s deservedly taken the limelight.
Luis Diaz ran riot
Diaz’s Premier League purple patch has been over for a bit of time now, but he’s dispelled any notions of another season of impotence in front of goal with an excellent three-piece on Europe’s biggest stage.
That’s nine goals now for the Colombian, who has also made two assists across his 15 fixtures this season. Last year, he’d managed just 13 goals and five assists across 51 matches in all competitions.
Liverpool are alive, and they proved once again that they are the team to beat, now table toppers in both the Premier League and Champions League, having advanced to the Carabao Cup quarter-finals too.
Darwin Nunez has started the past several matches up top, but Diaz, 27, was preferred last night, and oh how he took his chance, with Liverpool.com handing him a 9/10 match rating for his efforts.
He failed to make any kind of impact against a steely backline in the first half; the two outfits sort of negated each other before the break.
But Merseyside became enflamed in a fury of Red after the break, and Diaz was the catalyst, hailed for his “magnificent” opening goal by reporter Dominic King.
Okay, Diaz deserves the limelight, but let’s not forget the architect behind the goal that started it all off, and indeed, the man in the middle who has played himself into a nailed-on starting berth: Curtis Jones.
Curtis Jones was exceptional vs Leverkusen
Jones has given birth to a new level of performance in recent weeks, with his slick and stylish movements in the midfield paying dividends for a Liverpool side that requires technique, control and creativity across equal measures.
Minutes played
73′
Assists
1
Touches
51
Accurate passes
27/30 (90%)
Key passes
3
Possession lost
8x
Dribbles (completed)
2 (2)
Interceptions
1
Total duels (won)
5 (4)
Having completed 90% of his passes, Jones ensured Liverpool’s fluency remained intact. Interestingly about that statistic, Jones had actually ceded the ball three times across the first ten minutes, meaning that he then spent an hour pulling strings and doing so without losing the ball once.
Moreover, he created three key passes and won 80% of his duels too, while also completing 100% of his attempted dribbles, putting in a shift and a half against a side that simply refused to lose last year. Jones was duly awarded with an 8/10 match rating for his labours, praised for his energy and ‘pressing relentlessly throughout’.
It was indeed his “tasty” through ball, as per Melissa Reddy, which broke the deadlock, finely poised as the game was for about 50 minutes. The Athletic’s James Pearce even called it an “Alonso-esque” pass, with the artistry of the move unlikely to have been lost by the travelling head coach.
Liverpool have done it again, when will they falter? To be sure, there will be a hiccup down the line somewhere, but Slot has created a force to be reckoned with, and it’s starting to look like it carries the tools to win something silver and shiny before the summer.
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