Super Szoboszlai strike sets up comfortable Liverpool victory over Aston Villa
Liverpool 3 Aston Villa 0
Liverpool’s encouraging start to the season has turned into an excellent one after they beat Aston Villa at Anfield on Sunday.
After a week dominated by talk of a Mohamed Salah exit, the Reds’ Egyptian star did what he has done from the moment he arrived on Merseyside in 2017; he let his football do the talking, and how loudly it spoke.
Salah, the subject of a failed £150 million (€175m) bid from Saudi Pro League club Al Ettihad on Friday, scored Liverpool’s third goal in front of the Kop as Jurgen Klopp’s side made it three wins from four to start of the new campaign.
And, in the process, they produced a performance that will fuel optimism that a successful season lies ahead.
They will need to keep Salah for that to happen, of course, and with the Saudi transfer window remaining open until Thursday the threat of further developments in that saga is a real one.
Liverpool are braced for a second offer, but intend to resist it in any case.
For now, though, they can reflect again on a job well done, a game in which Dominik Szoboszlai scored his first goal since his summer arrival from RB Leipzig and where Klopp’s team played with the kind of purpose, aggression and quality which has been so sorely lacking for much of the last 12 months.
They were certainly too good for Villa. They were ahead inside four minutes as Szoboszlai, already a firm favourite among supporters, struck a sweet left-foot strike into the far corner, after a Trent Alexander-Arnold corner had dropped to him on the edge of the box.
Villa then lost centre-back Diego Carlos to injury, and found themselves two down soon after.
Alexander-Arnold released Salah down the right in trademark fashion, the Egyptian found Darwin Nunez and
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