Stop Mohamed Salah and you stop Liverpool? Not exactly. Bournemouth left Anfield having prevented the Egyptian from scoring or creating a goal. Their problem was that they also departed defeated by a record margin. Liverpool equaled the biggest ever Premier League win, set twice by Manchester United and once by Leicester, and their own biggest league victory, the famous 9-0 against Crystal Palace and a 10-1 demolition of Rotherham Town in 1896.
If there was an oddity that Jurgen Klopp’s 21st-century side mustered nine goals without their main marksman finding the net, the banned Darwin Nunez had further reasons to rue his absence. Even as Salah missed, others capitalized on Bournemouth’s abject haplessness. They took the opportunity to run riot.
Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho showed their rich promise as teenagers and delivered classy first Premier League goals, but this was a second successive game at Anfield defined by the center-forward. After Darwin Nunez’s headbutt against Palace, Roberto Firmino was a very different kind of headline act, and not merely because he is the false nine. Sometimes a selfless player’s contribution is scarcely reflected by statistics, but when he exited to a standing ovation the Brazilian had played his part in five goals, with a hat-trick of assists even before he got his first league strikes at Anfield in 2020.
Firmino was ubiquitous and mischievous, displaying his full array of tricks. He had two assists after six minutes, albeit when one was accidental, and three after half an hour. If Salah’s misses prevented Liverpool from getting double figures, Luis Diaz bookended the scoring. While Nunez was supposed to be the signing from Portugal who added an aerial threat, the Colombian showed his spring with emphatic headers from Firmino’s early cross and the substitute Kostas Tsimikas’ late corner.
