Liverpool beats Manchester United 7–0 to keep hope for top four

Goals from Cody Gakpo, Dar­win Nunez and Mohamed Salah halt­ed Man­ches­ter Unit­ed’s form and boost­ed hopes for a top-four fin­ish in Sun­day’s Pre­mier League at Anfield as Liv­er­pool beat their neme­sis 7- 0.

A week after a resur­gent Unit­ed won the Carabao Cup to clinch their first tro­phy since 2017 and were rumored to win the title, they were swept off the flanks as Liv­er­pool post­ed their biggest win­ning per­cent­age in the match.

Third-placed Unit­ed had a slight advan­tage for 43 min­utes, but Eric ten Hag’s men suf­fered their worst defeat at Anfield since a 7–0 loss to Wolver­hamp­ton Wan­der­ers in 1931.

Liv­er­pool man­ag­er Jür­gen Klopp said after the game that he had “no words” (for what they did). “Super, super live­ly, super active up front. We played great foot­ball against a team in good form.

In the first half we lost a bit of pace in a way that we did­n’t want. In the sec­ond half, obvi­ous­ly, the start was good. It was pret­ty good, the fin­ish was good, every­thing else was good.

Liv­er­pool’s first attack saw the home side take the lead with a superb shot from Gakpo.

With­in five min­utes of restart­ing, Dar­win’s head­er from Unit­ed’s com­i­cal defense made it 2–0 before a Salah-led Liv­er­pool’s light­ning-quick come­back end­ed with a Gakpo goal to make it 3–0.

Salah called for his fourth goal in the 66th minute and Nunez head­ed past the help­less goal­keep­er David De Gea in the 75th minute as Unit­ed were con­fused and had their heads in the bal­ance. But it continues.

Salah added salt to Unit­ed’s wounds with a close-range shot to score his 129th Pre­mier League goal for the club, sur­pass­ing Liv­er­pool leg­end Rob­bie Fowler.

Rober­to Firmi­no came off the bench and threw Klopp into trou­ble, but by then most of the Unit­ed fans had left.

Liv­er­pool had smashed Unit­ed 4–0 at Anfield in April 2022, a result that came as a big sur­prise giv­en the turn of for­tunes for both clubs since then.

Unit­ed’s crush­ing defeat, described by Sky Sports com­men­ta­tor and for­mer Unit­ed defend­er Gary Neville as “an embar­rass­ment”, secured third place on 49 points and an elim­i­na­tion from the title race. It is 14 points behind the lead­ers Arse­nal, who have played many matches.

Liv­er­pool have won their fourth of five league games, tak­ing 42 points above New­cas­tle Unit­ed and three behind fourth-placed Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur to move up to fifth (with one game remaining).

Liv­er­pool cap­tain Jor­dan Hen­der­son told Sky Sports: “It was a great day for every­one. The lev­el of per­for­mance from each play­er was top-notch and some­thing we have been miss­ing for a long time.

“It was clear in the last few Pre­mier League games that we were on the right track.

Liv­er­pool’s biggest ever win over Unit­ed came in 1895, when both clubs were in the sec­ond divi­sion, 7–1.