At times in the first half of this thrilling, occasionally messy Premier League fixture, there was a sense of two games taking place simultaneously. In the foreground the feature presentation: a tight, bruising affair, and a meeting of two depleted teams who have spent much of the season trying to bolt their own wheels back on while speeding through the weekly chicanes. A 2-1 victory here was Liverpool’s first away league win this season.
Behind this was the other game, the one taking place in the Darwin Núñez universe. This was a looser, chancier affair, a place where the physical rules are a little more vague but which seemed, at times, to bleed through into the real world, to exist alongside it.
