Back at Anfield things aren’t really clicking for Liverpool – yet. Liverpool will, surely, find a winner. 45 min: There will be four added minutes. Gomez, who hasn't had his best game tonight, is getting the hook. Mertens’s cute dummy catches Lovren and Van Dijk cold but Lozano cannot get hold of the ball. Mane with the run, the atmosphere goes up a notch, not least because Di Lorenzo put a hand on him as he got to the edge of the box. More on Napoli: so the president ordered the team to a training camp, they refused. 83 min: Liverpool are probing.
Referee. Firmino hooks the ball goalwards – it’s heading in – but Koulibaly is on the goal line to prevent Liverpool from stabbing home an equaliser. Here comes Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Anyway that's enough gangster dramas. Contrary to reports, ESPN FC's Julien Laurens fully expects Ronald Koeman to start Antoine Griezmann.
But Manolas has it again, and this time, Liverpool's front line is pressuring and harrying him. Merseyside Police is aware of social media posts saying Napoli fans are armed with golf clubs in the city centre. It is said that the club has even frozen players' wages.... What is going reasonably well is their European campaign, they have got eight points from four games, including of course a win over Liverpool in Italy. Carlo Ancelotti's Napoli will now expect to secure their place in the knockout stage with a win over a Genk side with a solitary point who were beaten 4-1 at home by Salzburg on Wednesday. It is not going so well this term, however: they have drawn five and lost one of their last six games. 61 min: Robertson rampages forward down the left and fizzes the ball into Salah, who has a couple of sky blue shirts for company. Spotting Liverpool's keeper off his line, Mário Rui has tried a shot from inside his half. 35 min: Crikey this is lethargic stuff from Liverpool. Robert Lewandowski and Andre Silva have been on fire since their restart, take a look at how the stats measure up.
They rarely ventured beyond the halfway line.
66 min: Klopp gesticulates as if to say, ‘more of the same, please.’ It has taken a while for Liverpool to grind through the gears but they’re the ones in the driving seat now.
Subs: Callejon, Llorente, Elmas, Luperto, Ospina, Younes, Gaetano. Hirving Lozano is the man who makes way. Weirdly, Henderson also tried from a mile away just now.
“Napoli were up for a proper fight, and whoever sees Napoli play usually, this was a different approach tonight – scoring a goal and defending with all they have,” reflected Klopp, whose concerns were provoked by more than the result. But it didn’t work out for us, and that’s how football is sometimes. Koulibaly directing operations from the back.
but then you leave a lovely big space in behind. The discouraging sights were everywhere.
... and back in yet again, Firmino getting a head on it this time, but sending it wide. If there's a winner tonight, that side's definitely through to the last 16. In fairness, Napoli have every man and his dog behind the ball. It was a reminder of the jeopardy in the fixture. Klopp wants three to secure qualification to the knockout stages without any faff.
Klopp jogs down the tunnel. Klopp was certainly losing his cool and, on the stroke of halftime, he was booked for protesting, shortly after Liverpool had appealed in vain for a penalty after Sadio Mane went down in the box. That's it.
Salah receives the ball in the area.
View full match commentary including video highlights, news, team line-ups, player ratings, stats and more. Rui goes for a run, but goes nowhere. Milner gets a good bite of Di Lorenzo (not in the literal Suarez sense; I mean that he kicked him). That’s the first real save the Napoli goalkeeper has had to make, and it was simple enough.
The visitors have been one of the stories of Serie A in recent seasons, they have been the closest challengers, and runners-up, to Juventus last season and the season before. I'm four years in, tell me when it was easy?”.
81 min: Elmas replaces Napoli goalscorer Dries Mertens. No golf clubs have been found.
Elmas comes on, Mertens comes off.
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Salzburg can still go through but Genk are out of this competition. Oxlade-Chamberlain has undoubtedly made a difference. But the ref lets it slide. “Napoli are basically Europe’s version of Crystal Palace for Liverpool,” emails Anthony O’Connell. 43 min: Robertson’s first corner is naff. Y afirma sin dejar espacio a la duda que el arbitraje ha empeorado de alguna manera desde que se tiene la ayuda del VAR.
Find out more, The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. They go again. Oxlade-Chamberlain floats a cross to the back post, where Manolas wrestles with Firmino, making life difficult for the Brazilian to get a clear header away. A thinker, an intelligent person's player. "Big defender getting the run on a small forward, that's all," says Steve McMan, who is having a good game for me. Alex Kirkland warns not to be surprised if Zinedine Zidane decides to leave Real Madrid for a second time. Enjoyable game in places, Liverpool a bit flat in the first half and against a decent Napoli defence with plenty about them, it was always going to be hard. Min odds, bet, and payment method exclusions apply. 72 min: Firmino forces Manolas into conceding another corner ... 71 min: Fernando Llorente replaces Lozano.
Trent AA does some incredible skill to keep it in.
He’ll be coming on. Salah back, and the Ox misses out. They might not be quite at their brilliant best domestically, but they keep wining, and there's every reason to suspect that they'll put it up to the Italians tonight at Anfield. Napoli come on the break. There was more intensity about Liverpool after the break and they went close to levelling when Roberto Firmino hooked the ball goalwards but Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly did well to clear off the line. Please note that this does not represent any official rankings. Corner. Also in Group E, Salzburg have beaten Genk 4-1 to move within touching distance of Napoli and Liverpool. 73 min: It’s one-way traffic at Anfield.
Firmino hooks the ball at the goal, Meret the custodian is nowhere... but there is skipper to step into the breach and hook it away. Henderson will play right back, The Ox right midfield. The ref blows for half time with Liverpool battering Napoli and there are lots of boos in a feisty atmosphere.
45+4 min: Meret makes a smart save from Milner! Ale Moreno slams the first-half performance of Real Madrid in their 3-2 defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk. Time limits and T&Cs apply. But Napoli have a bank of five, a bank of four, and then Llorente, who is languishing 35 yards from his own goal.
It was worth around £60 million given what followed in the knockout stage. Robertson’s corner was on the money – and Lovren’s header was better than it looked. Football really is just a game of opinions, and those opinions are largely expressed on the field by footballers to the referee. Of more pertinence, as Van Dijk was treated, the Napoli players were celebrating the opening goal by Dries Mertens, who had taken advantage of the space vacated by the centre-half to pounce on Giovanni Di Lorenzo’s pass and beat Alisson from a tight angle.
So far, whenever we played in Europe, we were in the final, so we should keep that going. side in action tonight were Chelsea, they have finished 2-2 in Valencia. Mohamed Salah had been hunting without much joy for his confidence, first touch and goal compass; Andy Robertson kept giving the ball away when trying to send Sadio Mane down the left wing; and Joe Gomez, preferred to Trent Alexander-Arnold, was struggling to replicate the crossing ability of the man he replaced.
The England man stands the ball up in the box, lovely cross, and here's Roberto Firmino timing his run perfectly. (Also, my knowledge of Neapolitan slang comes only from watching the Sky television series Gomorrah, and they don't talk about cricket much in that. The game really came to life in the last few minutes there. Subs: Wijnaldum, Adrian, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lallana, Shaqiri, Origi, Alexander-Arnold.