sport news Jurgen Klopp's gamble with making NINE changes for penultimate Premier League ... trends now
Ralph Hasenhuttl called it their Champions League final. Give him his due, he has an imagination. Given him a little more, his bunch rose to it.
For a time, anyway. Between the 13th and 27th minutes, Southampton made it their business to get in the way. They led 1-0 with a corker from Nathan Redmond and, in that slither of a single evening in a long season, Liverpool had blown it. Given it to Manchester City. Coughed it away with an understrength side to an inspired one.
But they got there in the end. Takumi Minamino hit a nice equaliser and Joel Matip lobbed the winner off his head – when it looped in, Jurgen Klopp punched holes into thin air. He did so again when the whistle went after a hard-won slog in the most unexpected of places.
Jurgen Klopp's gamble to make nine changes on Tuesday night paid off with another victory
Joel Matip's second-half winner means Liverpool take the title race to the final day on Sunday
And so the quest lives on. Two out of four ain’t bad, four from four would be history, and for now there is a chance.
The odds still favour City, but for them, that would be as good as it gets. For Liverpool, they can still talk of a quadruple.
That such an immense outcome remains on their table owes much to their powers of perseverance in a tough game, with those on Klopp’s fringes proving once more they know how to have a ruck when it is needed. That it isn’t just their leading lights who have the mentalities of monsters, and all that.
On the subject of rotation, the gag here was that Klopp picked a team for a Carabao
