September 22, (THEWILL) – For the second time in two months Liverpool dealt a 3-0 defeat against Norwich, this time in Tuesday’s English Football League Cup with Takumi Minamino opening and closing out the scoring to ease Liverpool into round four of the League Cup competition.
All thoughts of the Premier League returnees to put their woeful Premier League start behind them were no use because the change of personnel and switch to a formation that included a back three did not change the course of game as much as it did not affect the result.
Rather, the Merseyside, who also featured a much-changed team, had the upper hand in the matchday three fixture at Carrow Road, Norwich. Inside the first four minutes, Liverpool struck to carve out the opener and take an early lead.
Divock Origi brilliantly controlled a knock-down from a left-wing corner to supply Minamino, who turned brilliantly to squeeze home his first Reds goal since December 2020.
The hosts grew as the half wore on and were given the chance to draw level when Dimitrios Giannoulis was brought down in the area by Conor Bradley. However, the penalty by Christos Tzolis was well saved by Caoimhin Kelleher, the Reds’ keeper.
A second opportunity to net an equaliser came and was lost as all Pierre Lees-Melou did was to squander the chance just after the restart. The failure of Norwich to take advantage of these chances returned to haunt them.
Liverpool’s Origi nodded a smart header into the far corner from Kostas Tsimikas’ left-wing cross to become just the ninth Reds player to net 10 times in the competition in what was his 14th appearance so far.
With just 10 minutes left of regulation time, Minamino rounded off their victory by prodding home a telling ball from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s pass to give Jurgen Klopp a good run of his tweaked team selection that favoured fringe players with a proper mix of experience and youth.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
