Champions Manchester City met Liverpool at Anfield for another edition of what has repeatedly proven to be box-office Football.
The two sides went into the game in contrastingly dissimilar states, as City were in red-hot form, while Liverpool had shown plenty of cracks in the past few weeks.
Naturally, many expected the imperious Blues to pick up a commanding victory over the lacklustre Reds.
But what fans forgot to factor in was the fact that Jurgen Klopp has Pep Guardiola’s number.
Aided by a bit of overthinking on the Spaniard’s part, Klopp’s setup on the night managed to nullify City’s threat, while the Reds looked to hit on the counter.
Played out in front of an Anfield on form, the game grew faster as time went on, with strong duels being contested all over the pitch.
Eventually, it was Mo Salah who broke the deadlock with 15 minutes left on the clock.
The Egyptian spun Joao Cancelo and ran unopposed towards the goal, before slotting it past Ederson in front of an ecstatic Kop end.
In the end, the game lived up to the billing and was once again an absolute cracker.
It also gave fans plenty of topics to deliberate upon and even some incredible images. An example includes this picture of a livid Jurgen Klopp flipping off Antony Taylor after being sent off.
But the pick of the lot has to be this one featuring Liverpool midfielder Thiago and City striker Erling Haaland.
The Norwegian was tipped to continue his sublime goal-scoring record against a leaky Liverpool defence but eventually failed to do so.
He was locked up all game by Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk, and when chances did arrive, his usually impeccable finishing let him down.
Nevertheless, the image in focus displays the striker chesting the ball down, while Thiago competes for it in a rather unusual manner.
The Spaniard, in an honest attempt to win the ball, gets his foot up to Haaland’s testicles.
A hit directly in the ‘cojones’ can be pretty damaging, fortunately, Haaland got on with the game just fine, so we can assume that the assets remain unharmed.
It didn’t take long for the image to go viral, as fans produced countless memes with the image.
One of these sarcastically accused Thiago of trying to end the Haaland lineage, after all, we can’t have another one of these cybernetic goal-scoring machines, it’s not fair.
Spare of thought for Haaland’s girlfriend?
Others used the image as a metaphor for the game itself, as Liverpool essentially delivered a kick in City’s nads’.
And of course, there was a reference to Roy Keane’s altercation with the striker’s father Alfie, as fans hilariously implied that Thiago was simply finishing the job.
