Liverpool stay perfect in Champions League with narrow 1-0 win at RB Leipzig | OneFootball

Liverpool continued their perfect start in the Champions League with a narrow 1-0 against RB Leipzig.

Arne Slot’s men visited Germany after beating Chelsea, with Arsenal to follow, and this proved to be a professional job given the host’s start, which put the Reds on the back foot.

They showed remarkable resilience, weathering the storm and registering three consecutive wins to start this season’s competition. The club had previously achieved this feat twice before in 2020-21 and 2021-22 (first 7).

A well-executed passing sequence just before the 30-minute mark saw Cody Gakpo passing the ball to Konstantinos Tsimikas, who found himself in a threatening position on the left. Tsimikas then delivered a curved cross to Mohamed Salah at the far post. Salah’s strong header back across the goal was tapped in by Darwin Núñez, meaning the Uruguayan marksman has now scored five goals in his six away starts in Europe’s premier club competition.

Indeed, since his first season with Liverpool in 2022/23, only Erling Haaland (30), Salah (20) and Marcus Rashford (17) have scored more goals among current Premier League players across cup competitions (excluding Premier League) than Darwin Núñez (14).

If that’s not impressive, Núñez and Salah have combined for 14 goals in all competitions since the beginning of the 2022/23 season, with only Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne (2) the only Premier League teammates with more combined goals in that period.

It was the game’s only goal on a night when both goalkeepers made several exceptional saves; the Reds celebrate an away win that ensures Leipzig remains without a point. The hosts, however, will take encouragement from the number of chances they fashioned, Caoimhín Kelleher producing two fine stops in quick succession to thwart Benjamin Šeško and Xavi Simons. Kelleher, continuing to deputise for the injured Alisson, ended up making six saves, his joint-most in a European game for Liverpool (also six vs Sparta Prague in March).

Péter Gulácsi and his RB Leipzig defence also had to work hard, especially against Cody Gakpo, who took the most shots (4) and created the most chances (4) of any player. This makes him the first player for the Reds to achieve both 4+ shots and 4+ chances in a Champions League game since Mohamed Salah did it against Atlético Madrid in March 2020 (Salah had 7 shots and created 4 chances).

With so much attention on Liverpool’s busy upcoming schedule, they have just become the seventh top-flight English side to win each of their first six away games across all competitions in a season. They are also the third team to do so in the Premier League era, following Newcastle in 1994-95 and Manchester City in 2017-18.

Fans might have been worried about the club’s future after Jurgen Klopp left in the summer, but his successor, Arne Slot, has made a promising start to say the least. He is the first manager to win as many as 11 of his first 12 games in charge across all competitions in English top-flight history.

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