Virgil van Dijk takes a nice goal in convincing Liverpool victory

Saturday, November 27, 2021 at 5:50 PM• Dominic Mostert • Last update: 17:57

Liverpool scored an easy win over Southampton on Saturday. The Reds were supreme in front of their own audience and triumphed 4-0, partly due to Virgil van Dijk’s first goal of the season against his old club. With the win, Liverpool take over second place from Manchester City, which will still play against West Ham United on Sunday. Steven Gerrard recorded his second win in two games as Aston Villa coach, beating Crystal Palace 1-2.

Liverpool v Southampton 4-0
Liverpool came in with several changes compared to the FC Porto (2-0) duel in the Champions League: Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Fabinho, Diogo Jota, Andy Robertson and Jordan Henderson returned to the starting line. One of the players sidelined against Porto opened the scoring against Southampton. With an ingenious ball along the back line, Sadio Mané served the overrun Robertson, who in turn enabled Jota to finish from close range: 1-0. Jota’s goal, after 97 seconds, was the earliest Premier League goal since April 2019 (after 15 seconds against Huddersfield Town).

The striker celebrated his goal by portraying that he was gaming: after all, Jota had to withdraw from the fourth round of a FIFA tournament on Saturday, because otherwise he would be late for his own game. After half an hour he scored his second goal of the afternoon, again from close range. Henderson and Salah took care of the preparatory work. It was 3-0 via Thiago Alcántara, whose hard drive was violently changed by Lyanco. Liverpool completely dominated the game and in the second half also ensured that Southampton had to limit themselves to minimizing damage.

Six minutes after the break, Van Dijk lifted the margin to four. The defender walked away from Oriol Romeu after a corner from Alexander-Arnold, suddenly took the ball out of the air and was accurate. Adam Armstrong missed one of Southampton’s first serious chances when he was hindered by Ibrahim Konate and Alisson Becker, but Southampton didn’t come much closer to a goal of honour. Liverpool took the foot off the accelerator and became threatening a few more times, but it remained 4-0, just like last week against Arsenal.

Crystal Palace – Aston Villa 1-2
Jairo Riedewald stayed on the bench at Crystal Palace, while Gerrard chose to bring in Anwar El Ghazi late. The Dutch saw Matt Targett open the score from the bench after fifteen minutes in favor of the visitors. The left back was able to take the ball after a turning corner from Ashley Young and hit diagonally; it was his first league goal since October 2019. Thirteen minutes before the end, El Ghazi made his entrance at Aston Villa. The substitute provided the assist for the 0-2: on the edge of the penalty area he found El Ghazi, who searched the top left corner with a beautifully placed shot. Deep into stoppage time, Marc Guehi did something back, but that was it. Aston Villa recorded their second win in a row and exchanged fifteenth place, at least temporarily, for eleventh. Crystal Palace has the same number of points (sixteen) and is tenth.

Norwich City – Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-0
Both teams could hardly offer the crowd on Carrow Road. The accompanying supporters of the Wolves found the atmosphere in Norwich so tame that they played the song in the first half is this a library? (‘is this a library?’) bets. Tim Krul was tested for the first time two minutes before half time, after his defense had lost the ball clumsily in the build-up. The Norwich goalkeeper was back in his goal in time to stop Joao Moutinho’s shot. Teemu Pukki should have scored twenty minutes before the end, but the Norwich striker encountered goalkeeper José Sa one-on-one.