\n<\/p>\n
Liverpool climbed up to fourth in the Premier League table with a 3-1 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday. Alexander Isak and Andy Robertson’s first-half goals put the Reds in control while third-choice goalkeeper Freddie Woodman produced a number of superb saves to help preserve the lead before Florian Wirtz made the points safe in stoppage time. The afternoon was somewhat soured, however, after Mohamed Salah suffered an injury that might rule him out for the final weeks of his Liverpool career.<\/p>\n
Following a sleepy opening quarter of the match during which Liverpool fans protested against planned ticket-price rises, the Reds were awarded a penalty for a foul on Salah, only for VAR to show that Brennan Johnson got the ball rather than trip the Egyptian forward. That did at least spark some life into Liverpool, and Isak broke the deadlock with just his third Premier League goal of the season when he controlled Alexis Mac Allister’s scuffed shot, turned and beat Dean Henderson.<\/span><\/p>\n Palace responded, and Freddie Woodman saved well twice from Jean-Philippe Mateta, the second of which sparked a counter-attack that ended with Robertson arrowing a drive into the bottom corner.<\/span><\/p>\n Woodman produced another fine stop shortly before half-time to deny Maxence Lacroix, but while he was making himself a hero on the Kop, a legend of the club perhaps bid his final farewell as Salah was forced off with a hamstring injury just before the hour mark.<\/span><\/p>\n Palace controversially pulled a goal back when Daniel Munoz chipped into an empty net after Woodman suffered an injury when saving from Ismaila Sarr, which set up a nervy ending, during which substitute Jorgen Strand Larsen hit the post. Liverpool held out, however, before Wirtz finished emphatically in front of the Kop to ensure Arne Slot’s side leapfrogged Aston Villa and maintained their eight-point lead over sixth-placed Brighton in the battle for Champions League qualification.<\/span><\/p>\n GOAL<\/strong><\/b> rates Liverpool’s players from Anfield…<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liverpool climbed up to fourth in the Premier League table with a 3-1 win over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}