Liverpool’s transformation into 1990s Manchester United is complete
Liverpool 4-1 Ipswich: The Reds appear to be cruising to the Premier League title as relegation-threatened Ipswich were the latest side to be demolished
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Your support makes all the difference.Boring Liverpool? After scoring three inside one half to cruise to victory over Ipswich at Anfield, the league leaders are in fact only guilty of one thing – being too good for the rest.
Pundits out for the sensationalist clicks – and Arne Slot’s tough-to-please father – cannot gripe this time around, with a 4-1 success over a bedazzled Ipswich sending Liverpool six points clear at the top of the table.
What is most pleasing for the Anfield faithful, however, is the champion-like aura Liverpool have already created. Whenever teams came to Old Trafford in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were already beaten before a ball was kicked. Manchester City mastered that backed-up superiority complex until their recent cataclysmic decline, too.
Anfield has always been a near unconquerable fortress. But while Jurgen Klopp’s heavy metal football used to blow teams away, there is a more calm and confident swagger to Slot’s charges, one similar to that of Sir Alex Ferguson’s trophy-laden team – the opposition could be disposed of without breaking sweat.
On the back of their lashing at the hands of Manchester City last weekend, and given they travelled to Anfield where Liverpool had won their last 10 games against newly promoted sides by an aggregate scoreline of 34-7, to say Ipswich supporters weren’t expecting much from their trip to Merseyside was an understatement.
A fast start for the visitors was a must, with the only blot on Liverpool’s copybook this term being just how sluggish they have been in the first half of games. When Cody Gakpo lashed one over after 51 seconds, however, the omens were not good.
On the front foot from the off, it was only a matter of time until Liverpool edged in front, with Dominik Szoboszlai the goalscorer.
The Hungarian’s future at Liverpool was called into question after a mixed first season at the club. It wasn’t that he was doing anything particularly badly, but more it wasn’t all that easy to decipher what he was actually brought to the club for.
Some thunderbolts, with power rarely generated by human kind, suggested his long-range shooting and willingness to go for goal from all angles were behind the club’s decision to splurge £60m, but those efforts dwindled as the season wore on.
Szoboszlai's first five league starts in the attacking midfield role this season delivered eight shots, only adding to the doubts over his worth to the side. Something in the last few months, however, has changed.
Coming into Saturday’s clash, Szoboszlai's last five in that position produced a colossal 24 shots at goal – six against Tottenham and seven at Brentford in his previous two appearances for the Reds.
These were coming from all angles, and distances, too. Somebody has been granted licence to thrill, and it is working.
The finish for his third league goal of the season 11 minutes in at Anfield was pinpoint, with that added trademark Szoboszlai power, leaving Ipswich stand-in stopper Christian Walton with no chance.
If it wasn’t game over at this point, then the moment Mohamed Salah smashed into the roof of the net, after a Gakpo cross found its way to him at the far post, Ipswich were shifting into damage limitation mode.
The strike moved the Egyptian above Thierry Henry and into seventh in the all-time top Premier League goalscoring charts, one behind Frank Lampard one place above.
Szoboszlai had a hand in Liverpool’s third before the break, with his shot saved before Gakpo found the net from close range for the sixth successive home match.
The second half was the very definition of a procession, with it just a question of whether Liverpool had the energy to hunt for more goals.
Gakpo added his second on the end of a glorious Trent Alexander-Arnold cross, before Jacob Greaves headed a late consolation for Ipswich.
Winning a match knowing they could have upped the ante on demand, however, is sometimes just as rewarding for a Liverpool side surely strolling towards a second Premier League crown.
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