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Liverpool scored early, they scored late, and they scored quite a few in the middle as well as Maribor were thoroughly outclassed

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Tue 17 Oct 2017 16.55 EDTFirst published on Tue 17 Oct 2017 13.45 EDT
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp applauds the fans at the end of the match.
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp applauds the fans at the end of the match. Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images via Reuters
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp applauds the fans at the end of the match. Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images via Reuters

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And so has Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain!

I think we started with the right intensity. The manager said we can’t be complacent and we have to give our 100% effort, and the boys did that right from the off. Ultimately we got everything we deserved, and we were more clinical today and put away all our chances, or pretty much all of them. Every week it feels like we’ve got a lot of goals for us, but it’s not clicking at the final moments. If we keep creating chances and keep trying hopefully they’ll come off for us, and tonight they did.

We’re in an important part of the season. Everyone’s fighting for their place and I’m just ready for whenever I get the opportunity. I need to keep learning a new style of play and then whenever I get an opportunity do as well as I can.

Mo Salah has spoken!

I think it was a great game and we did good. I think it’s a good and important result for us. We need to keep looking forward and we have to win our next games. They gave the goal for me but it doesn’t change anything, the team did good and we had a good result, and that’s the most important thing. The most important thing for us is to improve the results in the Premier League. We need to carry on, keep looking forward and win the next games.

[Asked about recent disappointing results] We had bad luck. The last three, four games we missed many chances. We had bad luck. Everyone had confidence the good result was coming, and now we are in a good position.

That was laughably one-sided. Maribor, needing to keep things tight for a while and hope Liverpool got frustrated, conceded in the fourth minute, and for them it all went downhill from there. Liverpool kept trying to play passes to someone running down a flank who would then slam in a low cross for someone else to tap in, and most of the time they succeeded. Maribor might have coped with the width, and they might have coped with the pace, but couldn’t cope with width and pace at the same time. They also gave away a couple of goals with silly nonsense in their own half, which didn’t help. Liverpool scored seven, and could easily have hit double figures.

As it stands, Liverpool lead the group on goal difference from Spartak, with Sevilla a point behind and Maribor three points further back, now with horrible goal difference and surely destined for the wooden spoon.

GOAL! Maribor 0-7 Liverpool (Alexander-Arnold, 90 mins)

A great last few minutes for double-barrelled players. Alexander-Arnold lets fly from 30 yards and it hits the arm of a sliding defender and screams past a wrong-footed Handanovic and into the net.

Trent Alexander-Arnold of Liverpool celebrates after scoring the seventh and final goal. Photograph: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
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90 mins: Milner taps back to Coutinho and then turns and runs into the area; Coutinho chips the ball back into his path. It’s a lovely, lovely pass and it should have led to a goal, but Milner’s first-time cross is poor.

GOAL! Maribor 0-6 Liverpool (Oxlade-Chamberlain, 86 mins)

One last goal for the collection. Suler tries to take the ball past Sturridge 10 yards outside his area and fails, Sturridge runs towards the area and passes to Oxlade-Chamberlain, on his right, who gets into the box and scores a very easy goal.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain of Liverpool scoring the sixth goal. Photograph: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
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85 mins: Moreno has another of his shots from out on the left where he really shouldn’t be shooting. This one goes very high.

83 mins: Liverpool have eight men in the final 20 yards of the pitch, and Maribor at least as many defenders. There are just too many people for any of them to be able to do anything very much. Coutinho dances to his right, but it’s so crowded there he turns around and dances left again.

79 mins: Milner chips in a lovely ball from the right to the back post, but it’s well defended and Coutinho volleys against the legs of one of those pesky defenders.

77 mins: Save! Oxlade-Chamberlain slams a low shot goalwards, but it hits Handanovic’s leg and flies to safety.

75 mins: Maribor’s fans are still impressively loud, despite having had desperately little encouragement.

71 mins: Liverpool are still controlling the match, but they’re just not doing anything particularly exciting. Their last move peters out when a long ball to Lovren, who for some reason is pretending to be a left winger, bounces out of play.

67 mins: Bohar is picked out inside the penalty area, and for a moment it looks like Karius is about to be called into action. But then he isn’t.

60 mins: “I think the phrase ‘Bold Citrus’ is a typo,” writes Phillip Maskell. “It’s supposed to be old citrus. Like an orange that’s been left on the windowsill for too long and is starting to turn a peculiar colour.”

59 mins: A double substitution for Maribor: Pihler comes on for Ahmedi, and Kramaric is replaced by Hotic.

57 mins: He should have scored already! Moreno crosses from the left and it dips onto Oxlade-Chamberlain’s foot, 10 yards out, but he hits over!

57 mins: This is just horribly one-sided. Liverpool have another shot, after spending a long while with the ball in and around Maribor’s area but unsure what to do with it, but it’s deflected behind. Before the corner, Oxlade-Chamberlain comes on for Salah.

GOAL! Maribor 0-5 Liverpool (Firmino, 54 mins)

Another Liverpool free-kick – since I wrote that there had hardly been any there has been a constant stream – Coutinho crosses, and Firmino flicks a header off the top of his head at the near post, and in at the far!

Roberto Firmino of Liverpool scores his sides fifth goal. Photograph: Zemanek/BPI/REX/Shutterstock
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53 mins: Liverpool should have scored another then, but from Firmino’s low cross Wijnaldum scuffs his effort into a defender. It did, to be fair, come to him rather quickly. Anyway, now they’ve got a free kick just outside the area.

51 mins: Liverpool win a corner on the right, which is crossed to the far post, where Morales Tavares is very tightly hugging one Liverpool player and someone kicks the ball at shoulder height and just as Lovren was about to meet it with his head. Play on.

50 mins: Peter Oh sends me the link to the page on the website of Liverpool’s club shop where they describe their third kit:

The kit is Bold Citrus in colour and is framed with a black collar and trims

So “bold citrus” is a colour now?

48 mins: There have been hardly any free kicks in this game. Firmino’s just won one, out on the right wing, but it’s a real rarity. Perhaps because Maribor haven’t got close enough to Liverpool’s players to foul them.

Marko Vrbranjak has been in touch with some linguistic assistance, firstly in translating that tweet from Maribor from earlier. “Google’s translation ‘Winding from the south does not start. Known songs continue to sound violently violet!’ is disasturous,” he says. “The tweet means ‘Cheering from the south isn’t ceasing. Familiar chants keep loudly inciting the violet team.’ He goes on:

Slovenians often joke about football players’ use of the language.there’s even a word for it: fuzbalerščina - a colloquial term that would translate to footie-ish (language). Common expressions are:

    • we left our heart on the field (we gave everything)
    • the ball is round (a usual response to any question from a journalist)

The most famous quote belongs to a former intenrational player Sebastijan Cimirotic who once aledgedly said: “I’d like to thank my parents, particularly my father and mother.

I’ve now seen a variety of slow-motion replays, and still have no idea who scored the fourth. I mean, I have some idea: I’ve narrowed it down to two potential culprits. Here they are, both doing precisely the same thing to the same spherical object at the same time in the same place:

Mohamed Salah of Liverpool scores the fourth goal during the against Maribor. Or was it Roberto Firmino? Photograph: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

45 mins: Martin Milec is booked for not really being good enough, and also for tugging Coutinho’s sleeve.

44 mins: Coutinho slams in a shot that Handanovic pushes out to Firmino, but the forward can’t control it smartly enough to turn it into a good chance.

42 mins: Chance for Maribor! Can gives away a free kick, which is nicely floated just beyond the back stick by Ahmedi and Suler, unmarked and eight yards out, heads wide!

GOAL! Maribor 0-4 Liverpool (Salah, 40 mins)

Liverpool keep the ball for a bit, looking like they’re not really bothered about scoring any more, but then suddenly Moreno bombs down the left and is picked out, and his hard, low cross finds Firmino and Salah competing with each other for the right to tap it in. Salah looks mildly the happier when it ends up in the net, so everyone gives it to him, though it’s unclear.

38 mins: Another Maribor shot, this time from Kabha, but it’s from 35 yards and is miserably slow. Still, it’ll go down as another effort on target.

38 mins: Coutinho runs with the ball into the area, turns back inside, tries to turn again, runs into a defender, gets the ball again and shoots, but a deflection takes all the pace off the ball and Handanovic saves.

36 mins: Liverpool pass the ball around the Maribor penalty area with casual ease. It ends, after an age, with Milner thumping a cross into Suler’s face and it flying off for a throw-in.

32 mins: Liverpool haven’t nearly scored for a little while now, so Salah has a shot from 25 yards that Handanovic fumbles at first but clutches at second.

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