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ARNOLD, MANE STAR AS LIVERPOOL EDGE SPURS

Trent Alexander-Arnold and Sadio Mane each claimed a goal and an assist as Liverpool recorded a 3-1 win at Tottenham Hotspur to go fourth in the table.

Spurs thought they had made the breakthrough on four minutes, but Son Heung-min’s goal was overturned for offside following a review by the Video Assistant Referee.

Liverpool took the lead in first-half stoppage time as Mane squared for Roberto Firmino to tap in his fifth goal in six matches versus Spurs.

Alexander-Arnold made it 2-0 on 47 minutes, fizzing a shot into the far corner after Hugo Lloris could only parry Mane’s shot into his path.

Spurs, who took Harry Kane off with a double-ankle injury at half-time, responded immediately as Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg scored with a powerful strike.

Mohamed Salah had a 56th-minute goal also overturned for a handball in the build-up, before Liverpool restored their two-goal lead.

Alexander-Arnold’s deep delivery took a touch off Joe Rodon and fell invitingly for Mane to hammer into the roof of the net.

Liverpool have 37 points, four behind leaders Manchester City, who have a match in hand.

Spurs lie sixth with 33 points.

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BRUNO FERNANDES LATE FREE KICK SENDS LIVERPOOL OUT OF FA CUP.

Supersub Bruno Fernandes’ fantastic free-kick secured Manchester United an impressive 3-2 FA Cup fourth-round victory against rivals Liverpool as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer oversaw his first triumph against Jurgen Klopp’s men.

A week on from a tense goalless Premier League draw at Anfield between the Premier League leaders and reigning champions, an empty Old Trafford hosted a far more entertaining encounter between these old foes.

Mohamed Salah’s fine opener was cancelled out by Mason Greenwood in an entertaining first half which was followed by a similar pulsating second period on Sunday.

Marcus Rashford coolly put United ahead only for Salah to level with his second of the match, setting up a grandstand finish in which star man Fernandes came off the bench to score a super free-kick winner.

A home clash against West Ham is the reward for the Red Devils, who Solskjaer led to victory against Liverpool at the fifth time of asking – 22 years to the day after scoring the winner against them at the same stage of the competition.

Defeat made this the fifth time in six seasons that the Reds had failed to progress beyond the fourth round of the FA Cup under Klopp, whose poor start to 2021 continued as they lost on enemy territory.

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LIV 0-1 BUR: ASHLEY BARNES’ LATE PENALTY END LIVERPOOL’S HOME UNBEATEN RUN

Ashley Barnes’s late penalty snatched all three points as Burnley ended Liverpool’s unbeaten home run with a surprise 1-0 win at Anfield.

Jurgen Klopp’s team dictated play for much of the match. Sadio Mane went close with an early header, Xherdan Shaqiri blazed a shot just wide and Divock Origi also forced Burnley’s Nick Pope into action more than once in a one-sided first half.

A minute before half-time, Origi crashed a shot against the crossbar after a defensive error by Ben Mee put him clear on goal.

After Trent Alexander-Arnold went close, Klopp introduced Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino from the bench on 58 minutes, and Salah immediately brought a fine reflex save from Pope with a low, angled shot.

Mane shot over after being teed up by Salah as the Reds continued to press, while visiting substitute Johann Gudmundsson put a rare chance wide for Burnley after excellent wing play by Dwight McNeil.

Firmino side-footed wide on 72 minutes but the Reds could find no way through and, seven minutes before the end, Alisson brought down Barnes in the penalty area.

The Burnley forward calmly converted the penalty to end the Reds’ 68-match unbeaten home record.

Liverpool’s first defeat in three years and 273 days leaves them fourth, on 34 points, six points behind leaders Manchester United at the halfway stage of the season.

Burnley’s first league win at Anfield since 1975 lifts them up one place to 16th on 19 points.

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WE MUST BE CLOSE TO PERFECTION TO RETAIN THE TITLE – KLOPP.

Liverpool head coach Jurgen Klopp has said his side will need to be “close to perfection” in order to win a second straight Premier League title.

Klopp’s side ran away with the title last term, clinching the club’s first Premier League crown by an 18-point margin over Manchester City.

The race for the title is set to be much closer this season with Liverpool currently in fourth place, four points back of table-topping Leicester City having played one game fewer.

With several teams looking to be genuine title contenders Klopp knows that his side, currently on a four-match winless run in the Premier League, can’t afford many more slip-ups.

Asked what it would take to win the title, Klopp replied: “Close to perfection, but perfection depends on the situation.

“There is no perfect season with 114 points, there is just dealing with circumstances and the situation and the amount of games. We have to be as perfect as possible and that is what we try.”

Leicester took the lead in the Premier League after defeating Chelsea on Tuesday, but Manchester United could regain the lead by beating Fulham on Wednesday. Klopp said that the back-and-forth nature of the race this term means every team must always be on their toes.

“It changes all the time and that’s because it is so close, we know that for a few weeks,” Klopp said. “That makes it a slightly different title race or race in general this year and we have to be ready, 100 per cent.

“I know in this business only results count but before you have a result you need performances and the last performance was really good.”

Klopp said he wasn’t getting too carried away with his side’s form, insisting he saw some positive signs in Liverpool’s 0-0 draw against Man Utd on Sunday.

“It is not a catastrophe, it is not perfect, but that is not important,” he said. “Be as good as you can be. I saw a lot of good signs in the Man Utd game and if we had won that game everyone would have seen them, but because we didn’t win no one was interested. That doesn’t change my view.”

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UNITED DIDN’T EXPLOIT LIVERPOOL’S INJURY WOES- OGS

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer felt his side missed an opportunity to end Liverpool’s long unbeaten home league record after failing to “pounce” on their injury problems.

With no fit centre-backs again, the hosts fielded midfield duo Fabinho and Jordan Henderson in the centre of their defence but the pair were not really exposed, even if goalkeeper Alisson Becker had to make two good saves to keep out Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba in the goalless draw.

The top-of-the-table clash failed to live up to its billing and there was not even a penalty incident never mind a controversy, one of the major points of debate leading up to the fixture, to talk about over the course of 90 minutes.

But Solskjaer admits United left Anfield disappointed they were not able to open up a six-point gap over their arch-rivals at the top.

“They are a good side and they have some injury problems but we didn’t pounce on that,” he said. “I felt we grew into the game and got stronger and stronger and were closer to winning.

“We were a bit disappointed in the performance, not just the result.

“We didn’t do well enough to cause them problems in the first half but we defended well and they didn’t create too many chances.

We know we have players who can win you a game in the blink of a second and Bruno and Paul almost did.

“But I think everyone was a bit disappointed with the way we started the game but that is a good feeling to have that we were disappointed in the performance.”

Although Liverpool’s long unbeaten home league run was extended to 68 games they failed to properly test David De Gea in the visitors’ goal and for the first time since March 2005 the Reds have failed to score in three consecutive league matches.

Manager Jurgen Klopp insists he was happy with the performance as chances are still being created – they had 18 shots but only three were on target – and he is confident the goals will return.

We have a point more than before the game,” he said. “I think the performance was good enough to win it but to win a game you have to score goals and we didn’t do that, so that’s why we had that result.

“There is nothing fundamentally different, it is just the result is different.

“We try and score and we try not to not score. We have not to worry about it but we obviously have to ignore the fact and hope it will be good again.

“We did that, but the only possibility we have is to create situations and be ready to fail and do it again.

That is a massive different to when you are flying, because then you deal with the missed chances better.

“I saw my team playing tonight a really good team with a clear idea with super passes and great counter-pressing and great desire to score and we didn’t score.

“We will create chances and we will score. It is not as if we decide we will score a goal and now we will do it.

“I will help as much as I can to change the situation.”

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UNITED RETAIN TOP SPOT AFTER EARNING A POINT AT ANFIELD.

Manchester United kept their place at the top of the Premier League table with a goalless draw at defending champions Liverpool, as goalkeeper Alisson’s heroics denied them a victory at Anfield.

Liverpool enjoyed much of the first-half possession and created several chances, including Andy Robertson’s half-volley over the crossbar and Roberto Firmino’s tame effort into the hands of David De Gea.

Man Utd came close to breaking the deadlock with their only shot of the opening period, Bruno Fernandes’ free-kick flying inches wide of Alisson’s goal.

After the break, Harry Maguire denied Roberto Firmino a tap-in before Mohamed Salah fired wide for the hosts.

Alisson then kept out Fernandes with a fine reaction save before superbly keeping out Paul Pogba’s close-range strike late on, either side of Thiago forcing De Gea to palm his long-range shot wide.

A 12th match unbeaten takes Man Utd to 37 points, two more than second-placed Leicester City.

Liverpool are three points behind Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team in third.

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SALAH DONATES OXYGEN TANKS TO HOME TOWN IN FIGHT AGAINST COVID-19.

Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has donated oxygen and an ambulance to his home village in Egypt to help locals treat people suffering with COVID-19 as the country battles a second wave of infections.

The 28-year-old tested positive for the coronavirus last November.

“We have 14 oxygen cylinders inside the Mohamed Salah Charity Foundation. These help people in the village of Nagrig [Salah’s hometown], as well as those from surrounding villages,” Hassan Bakr, the head of the charity, said.

Bakr delivers oxygen cylinders direct to patients homes.

“We also have an ambulance unit built by Mohamed Salah, which has been operating since July 2020… this also helped us during the coronavirus, when transporting patients to the isolation hospitals,” he added.

Salah maintains deep connections with the village where he grew up, some 130 kilometres north of Cairo, and donates around £47,000 each year to the Mohamed Salah Charity Foundation.

Egypt’s government has confirmed 150,753 infections and 8,249 deaths since the start of the pandemic more than 10 months ago.

However, health officials say the real number is likely far higher because of the relatively low rate of coronavirus testing and the exclusion of private test results.

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KLOPP ESCAPES FA SANCTION DESPITE COMMENTS ON MANCHESTER UNITED PENALTIES.

Jurgen Klopp has escaped an FA fine despite criticising Andre Marriner and questioning Manchester United’s penalty record.

The German made the comments after his sides 1-0 defeat to Southampton on Monday evening. Klopp felt his side should have had a penalty in the first half when Sadio Mane went down after a collision with Kyle Walker-Peters.

Liverpool’s goalless performance led to only their second defeat of the season and United, who are level on points with a game in hand, now have a chance to go ahead.

Annoyed by the decision, Klopp claimed Marriner did not handle the Mane moment properly. Not stopping there, the Reds boss also questioned United’s large number of penalties. Across the 2018/19 and 19/20 seasons United were awarded 11 more penalties than any other team in the league.

But despite his comments, Klopp will face no action, according to reports.

“We had a really good view of it [the Mane incident], and it looked like a clear penalty,” said Klopp at full-time. “I turned around to the fourth official and asked if it was going to be checked, he said it already had been and was not a penalty. That’s 100 per cent true, and now someone wants to tell me how quick they had it in all these different angles.

Last year, there was a penalty against Leicester when people said Sadio Mane goes down too easily – if he goes down easily, we would have had a penalty in this game and the last game, a stonewall penalty, but what Andre Marriner did with Sadio Mane I’m not sure if that’s okay.

The boy tried everything, had a few great challenges with Walker-Peters. But there were a lot of situations which should have been free-kicks. The last one, when he goes down, you see that back and in the box he hits him in the end with his left foot, that’s a penalty.

“We cannot change. I hear now that Manchester United had more penalties in two years than I had in five-and-a-half years. I’ve no idea if that’s my fault, or how that can happen.”

Managers can be punished for their post-match comments, but the FA say “provided they are not personal in their nature, imply bias or attack the integrity of the officials in charge of the match, or in any other respect bring the game into disrepute.”

Despite Klopp questioning United’s number of penalties it seems his comments were not strong enough to warrant any action.

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Liverpool lose at Southampton to extend blip in EPL

On the receiving end this time was Liverpool, which also appears to be on its knees in what is shaping up to be the most open title races in years.

Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl slumped to the ground, pulled down the bill of his cap, and wept after another big win for his team in the English Premier League.

On the receiving end this time was Liverpool, which also appears to be on its knees in what is shaping up to be the most open title races in years.

Danny Ings, a former Liverpool player, scored in the second minute to lead Southampton to a 1-0 win over the defending champions at an empty St. Mary’s Stadium on Monday.

Liverpool has gone three games without a win — after back-to-back draws against West Bromwich Albion and Newcastle — and leads on only goal difference from great rival Manchester United, which has played one game fewer.

United isn’t the only team in striking distance of the lead approaching the halfway point of the league. Four points separate Liverpool from seventh-place Everton, with 10th-place West Ham only seven points off the lead in what was always going to be a disjointed season amid the pandemic.

Southampton is in the mix, too, its latest win lifting Hasenhuttl’s team to sixth place in a season when it has been top — albeit briefly — for the first time since 1988. It all proved too much at the final whistle for the emotional Hasenhuttl, whose team was heavily depleted for the game.

“When you see our guys fighting with everything they have, it makes me really proud,” the Austrian coach said. “You need to have the perfect game against Liverpool and I think we did have that.

“It was an intense game, my voice is nearly gone. The guys are tired — you have to be to win against such a team. The guys believed in what they were doing.”

Few could have foreseen this sudden drop-off by Liverpool, which has failed to score in successive games for only the second time in Jurgen Klopp’s five-year tenure.

Indeed, such has been Liverpool’s lack of cutting edge of late that Klopp’s team has managed just seven shots on target in the past three games. In the game before that, Liverpool beat Crystal Palace 7-0 away.

“Our decision-making was just not good,” Klopp said. “That is how it is when you don’t have momentum. We should have had much more chances.”

Southampton was missing the spine of its team, with first-choice goalkeeper Alex McCarthy (coronavirus), central midfielder Oriol Romeu (hamstring) and striker Che Adams (concussion) joining giant center back Jannik Vestergaard on the injury list.

But the Saints still had Ings, who latched onto a free kick by set-piece specialist James Ward-Prowse and lifted a bouncing ball over goalkeeper Alisson Becker and into the far corner.

“We all know how good Prowsey is on set-pieces, and all the parts came together and luckily I got the goal,” said Ings, who had an injury-plagued spell at Liverpool from 2015-18. “We had a chat before the game to see if there was a moment where we could get in quickly and luckily it paid off.”

It was attack vs. defense from then on but Southampton held firm, with center backs Jack Stephens and Jan Bednarek, in particular, outstanding.

“You know exactly what you are going to get from them,” Klopp said of Southampton. “You cannot be surprised but we looked surprised.

“At the beginning how we played, where we lost the balls, it’s not rocket science. We should have done much better. We played into their hands with the start.”

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FERNANDES PENALTY PUT UNITED LEVEL WITH LIVERPOOL.

Bruno Fernandes’s penalty earned Manchester United a 2-1 win over Aston Villa to go level on points with leaders Liverpool.

Man Utd took a 40th-minute lead at Old Trafford when Anthony Martial headed in Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s right-wing centre.

Villa levelled just before the hour-mark as Jack Grealish crossed for Bertrand Traore to score for the third time in four matches.

But the hosts took just three minutes to regain their lead, with Fernandes converting from the spot after Paul Pogba was brought down by Douglas Luiz.

Emiliano Martinez then made stunning saves to deny Martial and Fernandes before Tyrone Mings passed up a late chance to claim a point when he guided Matty Cash’s free-kick wide.

An English league record 36th victory on New Year’s Day puts Man Utd second on goal difference.

Villa drop to sixth place after a first defeat in six matches.