Christian Benteke returned to haunt and hurt the Reds by scoring both goals in a 2-1 victory for Sam Allardyce’s side at Anfield
“You must be sick of us!” came the victorious cry from the away end, who claimed a third consecutive Premier League win at Anfield – the first team to do so since Chelsea in 2005.
And Christian Benteke, a stylist mismatch at Liverpool, showed exactly how lethal he can be in a side geared to feed his strengths.
The 26-year-old, who left Merseyside for Selhurst Park in the summer, struck both Palace goals to render another phenomenal Philippe Coutinho effort pointless. The Belgium international’s double took his tally as an opposition player at the ground to five goals, surpassing the four he managed here in a Red shirt.
The “adult football” that was present in Liverpool’s previous two testing fixtures deserted them in front of their own fans. When Palace started to twist, Klopp’s men folded instead of displaying the kind of fight needed to fortify their Champions League ambitions.
A glorious afternoon at Anfield didn’t end as such, despite Coutinho adding to his collection of remarkable strikes from distance.
The 24-year-old placed the ball before analysing the far corner, taking a three-step run up and curling his free-kick over the wall and into the area he had anticipated. As soon as it cleared the wall, he had turned to celebrate in the knowledge that he had calculated the set-piece superbly.
Emre Can had an opportunity to double Liverpool’s advantage after clever work from James Milner and Gini Wijnaldum, but couldn’t master his judgement as well as the Brazilian, shanking his shot to the left.
A few minutes later, the German’s annoyance over that miss only intensified as Benteke scored his sixth goal in eight appearances against his former employers.
Dejan Lovren allowed Yohan Cabaye to deliver a lovely ball across the box, which the Belgian charged on to before beating his international team-mate Simon Mignolet.
The striker headed to the bench and celebrated with Mamadou Sakho, who was ineligible to play against his parent club. For those that continually ask why the defender has no future under Jurgen Klopp, it was another reason to add to a lengthy list of his unprofessionalism.
The second half started with Liverpool pushing head back in front and carving out several chances to do so, with Coutinho and Roberto Firmino heavily involved.
But their inability to punish Palace when in the ascendancy saw the visitors happily take advantage when the Reds became too passive.
Liverpool failed to deal with a corner and Benteke was once again on hand to hurt their non-defending.
Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip had been unbeaten in the 13 league games they started together previously, but the former was particularly woeful on Sunday.
In truth, there were far too many below-par performances from a team that have designs on mixing it with Europe’s elite.
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