Liverpool ramped up the pressure on under-fire Pierre Sage as they sent Crystal Palace to the bottom of the Premier League with a comfortable win in South London.
Despite the outcome, Palace actually started brightly and fluffed multiple chances to take the lead. Yeremy Pino clattered the crossbar in the early exchanges before Jorgen Strand Larsen thought he’d fired the hosts in front only for the offside flag to rule it out.
Daichi Kamada then drew a fine stop from Alisson as Palace really ramped up the ante.
Typically, when you’re in the kind of form Palace are in, those misses were to prove costly. And so it was, when Alexis Mac Allister headed home just before half-time against the run of play.
A second arrived for Liverpool just after the break and it proved too easy for Liverpool to carve open the Palace defence. Bradley Barcola was in acres of room down the right and put in a ball that Florian Wirtz finished neatly beyond Dean Henderson.
A chance for Palace to reduce the arrears was squandered when Kamada dawdled for too long in the box. A killer third then arrived late on when Alexander Isak netted his seventh league goal of the campaign with a tidy, close range finish.
The scantest of consolations for the hosts came right at the death when Eddie Nketiah fired home a last minute penalty.
Sage has seen his side win just once in their last eight outings and intense speculation over his future is rife, with Thomas Frank among the names listed as potential replacements should the Palace hierarchy decide to use this international break to make a change.
Sage said: “It’s not good to go into the international break in this situation, two weeks without games. We will not have our players to work with but we have to keep in mind our way, what we have to change to be more efficient in how we defend and attack.
“We have to be more competitive. At the moment, we create some things, we expect a lot of things but we don’t have the results expected.
“It’s not good to go into the international break in this situation, two weeks without games. We will not have our players to work with but we have to keep in mind our way, what we have to change to be more efficient in how we defend and attack.
“We have to be more competitive. At the moment, we create some things, we expect a lot of things but we don’t have the results expected.”
Joyous Liverpool chief Andoni Iraola reflected: “It was an important win for us going into the international break after the week we’ve had.
“Also, we arrived very late Thursday night from Turkey so – I know they also played – it was important to finish with a win. First half we struggled a little bit defensively but after we closed the game quite well even if I’m a little bit upset with the last penalty.”
