Szoboszlai on City Win: “You Have to Just Put Your Head Down and Run”
Liverpool and Dominik Szoboszlai put in a stellar defensive shift to beat Manchester City 2-0 and take an 11 point lead in the Premier League title race.
Manchester City ended the game on Sunday with 67% of the possession, with twice the shot attempts and twice the passes. Liverpool ended the game on Sunday with two goals to City’s none and took home three points that feel monumental in the title race.
More to the point, for all City’s possession, Liverpool’s victory felt deserved. The Reds defended tirelessly once they had their lead. They kept their shape and their nerve. They kept City outside and their shots—most of which didn’t reach the goal—speculative.
“City had the ball I don’t know how many per cent of the game but that’s life,” midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai said followingx Sunday’s hard-fought defensive effort that led to a 2-0 win. “We came here to take the three points and that’s what we did. It wasn’t easy.
“They were managing almost the whole game but that’s football sometimes, you have to just put your head down and run for each other. That’s what we did and in the end the result was for us. We just had to keep on running and know at the end, the result comes.”
Nobody on the Liverpool side ran harder than Szoboszlai on the day, with the Hungarian covering 11.5 km, more than anyone else on the pitch. At the final whistle, he collapsed in exhaustion. That Liverpool dominated the game without the ball owes a lot to him.
It also owes a lot to manager Arne Slot’s tactics, with Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones central as dual tens in a box midfield ahead of Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch while Luis Diaz and Mohamed Salah provided the most advanced attacking threat on the wings.
“We played with two thens, Curtis and me,” Szoboszlai added of the day’s winning tactics. “It’s not that we always play like that without a nine but that was our plan, to drag them and then we knew there was going to be a space for Mo and Lucho one versus one.”
Tactical tweaks and hard running, and now just two days for Szoboszlai and his teammates to recover before Newcastle come to Anfield on Wednesday. It will be a tough task, but a well earned week off follows—and he and his teammates will surely need just that.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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