On November 30, 2017, the entire Liverpool team visited Stoke-on-Trent, England, to challenge Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium.
Founded in 1863, Stoke City is the second oldest football league club in the world after Notts County.
Although this club has a long history, its most glorious season was the 2014-2015 season, which was a great season in their team history.
That year they defeated Arsenal 3-2 at home, and then swept Liverpool 6-1. They were dubbed the terminator of a wealthy team by the media at the time.
It's a pity that they later abandoned Boyang and collapsed before they could successfully rise.
This summer Stoke City lost their star player Marko Arnautovic, and Shaqiri was also poached by Liverpool, so this season Stoke City's performance has plummeted.
In the eyes of many media, Stoke City has already booked a place for relegation this season.
This is also true. After thirteen rounds of the Premier League, Stoke City only scored 11 points, ranking fourth from the bottom.
Klopp made a large-scale rotation in this game, and the media also believed that Liverpool would easily win Stoke City, even if Liverpool was playing away from home.
But the fact is that Liverpool did not play that easily.
The size of the Britannia Stadium is 100*64 meters, which is smaller than Anfield.
The small space means that teams will become denser when defending.
In addition, all Stoke City players are tall and powerful, and their defensive style is as brutal as playing rugby. This resulted in Liverpool having an absolute advantage in the first half, but no goals came.
Jota and Shaqiri actually performed well in this game. Although Stoke City's defense was dense, it was actually full of loopholes.
Stoke City is currently the team that concedes the most goals in the Premier League, which shows how bad its defense is, but it just can't score, which is really worrying.
At the 70th minute of the game, Klopp couldn't sit still.
If such a relegated team cannot win, and Liverpool still wants to compete with Manchester City for the title, they might as well stick their heads in the toilet and drown.
Klopp was so angry that he directly replaced three people in one go.
Mane, Salah, and Mo Yang all played.
Then Stoke City was defeated by the golden trident of Mane, Salah and Firmino who were in great form recently.
In the 80th minute of the game, after receiving a long pass from Mo Yang, Arnold quickly dribbled the ball from the wing to participate in the attack, and then suddenly stuffed the ball toward the baseline.
Salah quickly tipped the ball back into the small penalty area before it rolled out of the baseline.
In front of the goal, Firmino emerged from Zuma's three-man double-team and cleverly knocked the ball behind him with his right heel.
Mane, who ran to the center, met the ball and shot into the net, finally breaking the deadlock. The next goals can be said to come one after another naturally.
In the 85th minute of the game, Mo Yang saw a magical leak in Stoke City's penalty area in front of the top of the arc, and gave the ball directly to Firmino.
After Firmino caught the ball with his back to attract the defender, the outside of his left foot suddenly rubbed the ball from the crotch of Stoke City center back Zouma to the left side.
Salah got ahead of Stoke City center back Shawcross and fired a shot. The ball hit the post and entered the net, breaking through Stoke City's goal again.
In the 88th minute of the game, Mane returned the favor to Firmino. He received an over-the-top pass from Mo Yang and cut inside into the penalty area. However, he did not hit the ball. Instead, he swept the ball to the middle, allowing Felipe to come in behind.
Ermino succeeded with an easy push shot.
In stoppage time, Salah received Arnold's overhead pass and went directly into the Stoke City penalty area. After causing confusion, he passed back from the bottom line to Firmino in the penalty area at the top of the arc.
Firmino exploded on the spot and shot the ball from the upper right corner, scoring twice.
The game ended from then on, and it was a pure bloodbath.
Although Mo Yang did not assist, the four goals were all initiated by his feet, allowing countless Premier League media to once again see what Mo Yang's efficiency is.
…
On December 2, Liverpool continued their journey and went to the Farma Stadium to face Brighton away from home.
Entering December, the temperature in England has dropped significantly, so much so that in the last two rounds of the league, players from various clubs have suffered muscle strain during the warm-up phase.
The Liverpool game was played at night, and the temperature had dropped to around 0 degrees. As a result, Henderson accidentally strained his thigh muscle while warming up before the game.
Although it was a very minor strain, Klopp immediately took him out of the starting lineup and replaced him with Fabinho just to be on the safe side.
In this game, except for the unlucky Henderson, almost all of Liverpool's main players were played, regardless of the final round of the Champions League group game against Spartak Moscow a few days later.
Liverpool has qualified ahead of schedule. From now on until mid-February, they will not have to worry about fighting on multiple fronts and can focus all their energy on catching up with Manchester City in the league.
In this game, Brighton lacked offensive means and directly set up a iron barrel formation.
However, there are no eggs!
After nearly 30 minutes of furious attack, Liverpool finally broke through Brighton's iron barrel formation at the third corner kick.
Mo Yang took a corner kick from the right, and the ball landed extremely precisely. It passed Brighton center back Dunk at the first point and made Duffy unable to touch the second point.
Instead, Van Dyke, who was caught in the middle, pushed forward and directly broke through the door guarded by Ryan. He simply aimed the pass at Van Dyke's forehead.
Either you don’t come, or you come or you will win!
Just one minute later, a goal that heralded another massacre came as expected.
After Brighton restarted the kick, Dunk directly made a long pass from the backcourt to the left, looking for their winger Brown.
As a result, Arnold won the ball and passed it directly to Van Dijk on the right side of the penalty area.
Van Dijk stopped the ball and looked forward. At this time, his good vision, offensive awareness and ability to kick the ball were all reflected.
Seeing that Brighton's right half was empty, he quickly made a long pass to Mo Yang, who had already taken the lead to run to the center line.
At the same time, Mane directly drew his ribs in a diagonal direction, giving up the left path to Mo Yang.
Firmino in the middle also quickly moved forward to contain Brighton's Dunk for Mane and Mo Yang.
Seeing Duffy's return in time, Brighton right back Bruno handed Mane over to Duffy's care, and he went straight to Moyang.
Just when he finished thinking about how to knock down Mo Yang without getting a red card, Mo Yang, who was sprinting with the ball, suddenly slowed down, then suddenly raised his right foot, and directly kicked the ball away with the outside of his instep.
Suddenly the ball went from left to right, crossed an exaggerated C-shaped arc from the Brighton penalty area line, and rolled to the back point.
In front of Brighton's penalty area, Duffy, Dunk, and Borg fell to the ground one after another. All three of them wanted to stretch out their feet to destroy Mo Yang's pass, but they were all out of reach. They were only a toe away.
At the back point, the unmarked Salah outflanked the ball and brought the ball into the small penalty area and directly through the goal, helping Liverpool win another victory.
In the end, Liverpool caused another tragedy with a score of 5-1 at the Farma Stadium.
After the game, Salah scored twice, Firmino and Mane each scored one goal.
Mo Yang also scored a free kick, received two assists and scored a goal, and was replaced by Klopp in the 68th minute.
If not, the game would probably be more than this score.