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By Martin Graham | 23rd Apr 2023
Liverpool showed their resilience at Anfield against Nottingham Forest on Saturday as they pushed past their stubborn opposition to win 3-2.
Mohamed Salah’s 70th-minute strike was the final blow that saw off Steve Cooper’s side at Anfield after an action-packed match that saw five goals scored in the second half.
After opening his account for the season, Diogo Jota made it two braces in successive games, having scored the opener two minutes after the restart, but saw his headed effort cancelled out by Neco Williams’ deflected shot.
Jota grabbed his second of the afternoon via a brilliant volley but Morgan Gibbs-White leveled matters again 12 minutes later to make it 2-2, before Salah rounded up the scoring for the day.
The result means Liverpool have now recorded two successive wins and realistically remain in the push for an European spot. It is quite the opposite for Nottingham Forest, who have lost four games in a row and continue to languish in the relegation zone.
It was not an easy win for Liverpool though and Klopp admits his side were made to work very hard for the win.
Klopp admits Nottingham Forest victory was hard-fought
Speaking after the game, Klopp said: “Yes, especially when the ball was out, then the game really started – the throw-ins created a proper mess for us. You can prepare a lot in football – and this game was now the preparation for us for the future – but for this kind of thing, obviously we were not prepared well enough. We knew about the threat: when Niakhate has the ball and throws it into the box. “
“The first ball we could have defended better, I think Ibou was a bit too much in a fight with whoever was around him, but how we deal with the second, third and fourth ball was not even close to being good enough because they won all of them and put it always back into the area and that, in the end, caused massive problems.”
“I think especially the second goal they scored… as a player who is not directly involved, you need to read the situation better because everybody is there, there is one who fights for the ball and all the rest has to pick up where is the next potential threat. There, that was not good enough. We scored our goals as well from set-pieces, different set-pieces, so [it was a] strange game.”
Liverpool will now hope to make it three wins in a row when they take on West Ham on Wednesday.
Martin Graham is an MFF sports writer