A man who turned Liverpool down but who will not be in the Rhineland forever. Bonfire night ended with Liverpool top of the vast Champions League table as well as top of the Premier League.
Luis Diaz had scored a hat-trick. There were cheers when defeats for Real Madrid and Manchester City were announced and on this form Liverpool will challenge them hard for the European Cup. Throughout most of the first half, fireworks cascaded around the stadium but Liverpool only came to life when the lightshow was over. After the interval their possession became ever more threatening, something Leverkusen seemed to sense, as even before the hour mark they were indulging in the kind of time wasting more suited to a lower-league club eking out a draw than the champions of Germany.
By the finish, they were playing like a lower-league team. Leverkusen had seized up to the extent that four Liverpool forwards were charging at two defenders. There was nobody better to finish it. The hour mark saw the match settled.
Lesser footballers would have shot there and then, but the Colombian delayed just enough for Lukas Hradecky to fall to his knees before scooping the ball over the Leverkusen keeper and into the net beneath the Kop.
All this was done at pace. Four minutes later came the second. Like Alan Shearer, Mohamed Salah is an avid goalscorer who is a superlative crosser of a ball. Thereafter, Leverkusen fell apart. It had begun so differently. Slot played three in midfield, Alonso two, but he employed Jeremie Frimpong as an aggressive right wing-back.
