Mohamed Salah impressed off the bench on his return to the Liverpool group in a snug 2-0 win over Brighton as Hugo Ekitike’s double took the champions as much as sixth within the Premier League.
Salah, restored to the squad after talks with head coach Arne Slot on Friday, was launched sooner than anticipated, changing the injured Joe Gomez after 26 minutes, and Anfield greeted him with huge cheers, any ill-feeling over his interview at Leeds final week forgotten.
Ekitike scored twice for the second recreation operating, but it surely was the efficiency of Salah, in his closing look for Liverpool earlier than leaving for AFCON with Egypt, that this recreation will likely be remembered for.
Hugo Ekitike celebrates after scoring his second objective of the sport towards Brighton
Hugo Ekitike leaps to go Liverpool right into a 2-0 lead towards Brighton
Salah arrange Ekitike’s towering header with a nook within the second half, ending a run of three league video games with out a objective involvement, and almost ended a torrid week with the proper ending, however couldn’t discover the again of the online late within the recreation together with his aspect 2-0 up.
Liverpool have been already in entrance when Salah got here on after Ekitike scored the quickest objective of the Premier League season with simply 46 seconds on the clock. Gomez had pounced on a poor Yankubah Minteh clearance to tee up the Frenchman, now as much as 10 Liverpool targets.
Brighton’s Diego Gomez didn’t convert two huge possibilities to equalise both aspect of the break and was lucky nonetheless to be on the pitch for the second, a sitter on the again submit, having survived a VAR verify for a excessive problem on Florian Wirtz.
Liverpool made a probably troublesome afternoon look straightforward as they prolonged their unbeaten run in all competitions to 5 video games to overhaul Brighton within the desk as they drop all the way down to ninth after a 3rd recreation with out a win.
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