Mane: Liverpool star extends notable run against Aston Villa

Liverpool forward Sadio Mane improved on his inspiring run against Aston Villa in Tuesday’s Premier League outing.

With the scores tied 1-1 at Villa Park after Joel Matip had cancelled out Douglas Luiz’s opener, the Senegal international scored the winner in the 65th minute after he was teed up by Luis Diaz.

With that, Mane has now been directly involved in 11 goals in his last nine appearances against the Claret and Blue Army in all competitions.

Nine of the contributions are goals while two of them are assists.

Interestingly, that effort is the ex-Southampton star’s 15th goal of the 2021-22 English elite division campaign, which makes him joint-fourth top scorer alongside teammate Diogo Jota.

While he was in action from start to finish alongside Matip and Guinea international Naby Keita, Mohamed Salah was introduced for Diaz in the 71st minute.

Two of Mane’s four total shots were on target while he contributed one key pass as he won three aerial battles and contributed two crosses.

The 30-year-old completed just one successful dribble and he was fouled thrice. In addition, he boasts 33 passes with a passing accuracy of 72.7%.

In his post-match assessment of the outcome, manager Jurgen Klopp claimed it was a ‘massive’ performance.

“Massive. Outstanding, again an incredible mentality, changed five times, coming here, a well set-up team obviously, in a diamond,” he was quoted by the Liverpool website.

“We needed time to find into the game and the opponent was there from the beginning, like really aggressive, lot of challenges.

“Actually, the main issues we had were losing balls in for us the wrong areas, from there they could go. Then it’s difficult to get rhythm.

“On top of that, we were 1-0 down. At least that, we could sort pretty quickly, that was important.”

The German tactician also marvelled at Mane’s individual brilliance.

“In the last 10 or 15 minutes of the first half we really started controlling the game and that was then obviously the way we had to do it,” he added.

“Scored the second – incredible goal, top-class. Winning the ball back, passing it, first pass forward, Luis sensational, a little juggle here and then crossing the ball.

“Sadio very surprisingly and Sadio made the world of it. And then we had to dig deep, clear.

“They had moments, of course, they had a big chance with Ingsy, that was obviously a world-class situation from Ali.”

Liverpool will now square up against Chelsea in Saturday’s FA Cup final billed for Wembley.