It took Leicester City seven breathtaking second-half minutes to hit the nail on Liverpool’s coffin as they grabbed three goals in that time as another Alisson mistake contributed to a 3-1 defeat for Liverpool at the King Power Stadium.
The Premier League champions seemed comfortable and in control for 78 minutes after taking a deserved lead through Mohamed Salah after 67 minutes, but Jurgen Klopp’s side imploded to slip six points behind their opponents.
James Maddison hauled Leicester level when his free-kick was allowed to stand following a VAR review for an offside call on Daniel Amartey. A terrible breakdown in communication between Alisson and new boy Ozan Kabak allowed Jamie Vardy to easily tap home from close range on 81 minutes.
Harvey Barnes finished off the champions with a well-taken goal five minutes from normal time as Leicester moved up to third level on points with Manchester United who couldn’t beat West Bromwich Albion.
Liverpool remains in the fourth position, 13 points behind leaders Manchester City having played one game more.
Watch the highlights of the match below
Stats and facts from the match (Backed by Opta)
- Liverpool have lost three consecutive Premier League games for the first time since November 2014, when managed by current Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers.
- Jürgen Klopp became the ninth manager to take charge of 300 games for Liverpool in all competitions, while the German became the first Reds boss to lose his 300th match since Bill Shankly in 1965.
- Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers became the first former Liverpool manager to beat the Reds in the Premier League since Roy Hodgson did so with West Brom in April 2012.
- Liverpool have conceded seven goals in their last two Premier League games, as many as they had in their previous 10. Indeed, the Reds have conceded 32 goals in 24 league games this season, just one fewer than they did in the whole of 2019-20.
- Only against Arsenal (11) has Leicester striker Jamie Vardy scored more Premier League goals than he has against Liverpool (8).
Jurgen Klopp conceded after the match that their title ambitions might be over, he said:
“Yes. I don’t think we can close the gap,” he said after a third straight Premier League defeat.
“We have to win football games and big parts of the football were really good. We have to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings.
“Today we didn’t do that. The rest of the game was really good. First we have to perform again, results are massively related to the performance.
“We are not worrying about the title, we are not silly. With the majority of the game I agree it was a really good game. It’s not easy to dominate Leicester in the way we dominated.
“We scored a great goal but conceded a strange one and I think it’s offside and the 2-1 is a misunderstanding. That had too big an impact on the game. We had to show a different reaction and the third we gave away too easily.”
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