Liverpool moved nine points clear at the top of the Premier League after a potentially season-defining 2-0 victory over a Manchester City side in disarray.
That Pep Guardiola’s team are now 11 points adrift in fifth after a seventh match without victory says everything about the club’s current crisis which showed no signs of ending at Anfield, where they have won on only one of the last 22 league visits.
City have now lost four league games in a row in the same campaign for the first time since 2007.
Arsenal are the closest challengers but even they have work to do after Arne Slot’s side won an 18th match out of 20 this term with a degree of comfort.
Cody Gakpo’s 12th-minute strike was all the hosts had for an opening barrage and it needed Mohamed Salah’s late penalty – the sixth successive league match in which he has scored and his sixth goal in eight appearances against City – to secure the points.
