London (AFP)

Corrected by Manchester City (4-0) Thursday, Liverpool toiled for more than an hour but ended up taking the best on relegation Aston Villa (2-0), Sunday, for the 33rd day of the Premier League.

The Reds provisionally resume 23 points ahead of Manchester City, which moves to Southampton a little later.

The Birmingham club remains just below the waterline, in 18th place, a little behind Watford (17th).

After the rage suffered at Etihad, Jürgen Klopp had assured that his team was not demobilized after the first title of champion won by the club in 30 years, but it is still the impression that they gave in first period.

With Naby Keïta, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Divock Origi titular, the German had tried to put a little new blood, without yielding to the temptation to launch young inexperienced.

But for 45 minutes, we were bored as rarely at Anfield this season, the game being slow, without intensity or inspiration and without the clinical precision in the passes which are the usual strength of the Reds.

It was almost with pride that the champions ended up finding the flaw to bring to 24 their winning streak in a row at home - absolute record in the Premier League - and to 57 the number of undefeated matches, still far from 86 from Chelsea between February 2004 and October 2008.

As Liverpool swung the ball around the Villans' penalty area, much like in a handball match, Naby Keita was found in the rectangle and his audacious pass on the ground reached Sadio Mané who scored in force with the help of the crossbar (1-0, 71st).

- Wink of the next generation -

At the very end of the match, Curtis Jones, a young 19-year-old midfielder, celebrated the five-year contract he signed with the club he joined at the age of nine during the week, scoring the goal of 2-0 on a pass decisive withdrawal from the head of Mohamed Salah (2-0, 89th).

A nice wink from the next generation who will only partially forget the average performance of a club which does not play, it is true, more than for statisticians and history.

With now 89 units on the clock, Liverpool is only 11 units from the all-time record for an English club over a season, owned by City (100 in 2017/2018), when it has 5 games left to play.

Before this match, the two afternoon meetings had resulted in two draws which do not make much progress for the teams concerned.

Sheffield United, who returned with a difficult draw (1-1) from Burnley, is still losing ground on European places, as he finds himself nine lengths from Manchester United (5th).

West Ham can, for its part, bite its fingers to come back only with a point from Newcastle (2-2), while the Londoners have led twice to the score.

Villa's defeat meant that they nevertheless increased their lead in the red zone to 4 points, but a success would have been an important step towards maintenance, after their victory in extremis (3-2) against Chelsea in the middle of the week.

© 2020 AFP