Mo Salah opened the scoring for Liverpool in his final Merseyside derby, and his goal owed plenty to a sublime piece of play in the lead-up.
The Egyptian drilled a low first-time shot beyond Jordan Pickford from close range, having ghosted in behind Vitaliy Mykolenko to get on the end of a brilliant through ball from Cody Gakpo which penetrated a gap in the Everton defence.
The goal came just two minutes after the Toffees thought they’d had the lead through Iliman Ndiaye, only for his strike to be disallowed after a VAR review deemed Jake O’Brien to have been offside in the build-up.
Gakpo praised for assist for Salah goal
Salah will understandably get the headlines for his cool finish, but much of the credit must also go to Liverpool’s number 18 for the quality of the assist, something that Chris Sutton acknowledged.
He said in co-commentary for Sky Sports: “What about the pass! The spot from Gakpo and the weight of the pass is absolutely stunning. Salah isn’t going to miss from there.”
Assist capped a strong first half from Gakpo
Gakpo has been heavily criticised for some of his performances this season, and there have been too many games where the Dutchman has played nowhere near his best, with Stephen Warnock lamenting him as ‘predictable‘.
However, his pass to pick out Salah for the opening goal in the derby was inch-perfect, and the scorer acknowledged as much in the celebrations afterwards.
It’s a second Premier League game in a row in which the 26-year-old has claimed an assist, having also set up the Egyptian to score against Fulham last weekend, and hopefully it hints at a resurgent final few weeks of the campaign for the Netherlands international.
Shortly before half-time, Gakpo unleashed a decent strike which forced a good save out of Pickford as he sought to get on the scoresheet for the first time since the end of February.
Hopefully (at the time of writing) our number 18 can continue his thus far energetic performance into the second half of this game, and into Liverpool’s remaining matches of the season.
You can view Salah’s goal against Everton below, via @SkySportsPL on X:
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