Liverpool 2, Aston Villa 0: Man Of The Match

What a difference a half (and some subs) makes. What was looking like another dire performance picked up with a change in personnel. Alisson Becker showed up several times with key saves, and was also aggressive off his line to attack the ball to clean things up. Joe Gomez did a complete 180 from his nightmare on Thursday, and was an assured presence alongside Virgil van Dijk to control things from the back as well as to spring several counters. Sadio Mané worked his tail off as usual, but found no joy until the subs came in. He was electric once he had the space to operate and made a smart run to get his goal. Curtis Jones only had a cameo, but he managed to bag his first Premier League goal just a day after signing a new contract.

With our favored polling tool out of service, we’re instead giving you a choice between a few of the players we thought looked best today for the Reds, so make your choice below and vote for who you think should be the man of the match—or take to the comments to let us know that we got it wrong by leaving the real man of the match off the list entirely.

As always, anyone visiting on Apple News or Google AMP who wish to vote and can’t see the poll can make it visible by navigating to the front page of The Liverpool Offside and re-entering the story.