Sadio Mane Is Back With His Own Magic

Sadio Mane is having somewhat of a banner two weeks. After struggling with form throughout the season, signs were pointing to the goals returning soon - and return they did. He scored a glorious hat trick against Porto in the Champions League last week and scored the fourth against West Ham in a win at Anfield on Saturday. Of course, Mane himself will say that scoring goals isn’t what he was focused on against the Hammers, but we all saw it right? We know better.

“When we scored three and I missed the chances, in my head it was more important that we were winning,” explained Mane following the match.

“It was a good goal for me. I never doubt in football, you always have to be positive. That’s what I try to do and finally I scored.”

The first half of hour of the match was definitely not easy, with our front three missing chances left and right, in almost painful fashion. It very much looked like it was going to be a formerly Typical Liverpool performance, before Emre Can was able to open the tap and get the scoring started for the Reds. Despite that, though, Mane explains that persistence was key.

“We started well. It was not easy to score the first goal but we tried and tried again. In the end, we scored. That was the key – the game was a little bit open then.

“We tried again, created many chances and at the end got four goals, so we deserved to win.”

The win helped Liverpool leapfrog rivals Manchester United in the table to take their second place spot, but it was short lived. As the game of musical chairs that is the top four of the Premier League dwindles towards the end, every chance to gather points is one that shouldn’t be lost. The only thing is that Liverpool can only worry about themselves and take each game as they come. With 10 games to go in the rest of the season, there’s plenty of chances for them to pounce on whatever slip up happens.

“It’s too early to speak about possibilities,” Mane said when asked about where Liverpool will finish.

“But it’s football, everything is possible. We’ll take it game by game and try to win. We don’t know what place we’re going to be in.”