Liverpool 4-3 Villarreal: Mac Allister double leads the fightback at Anfield

Liverpool came from two goals down to beat Villarreal 4-3 at Anfield, with Alexis Mac Allister scoring twice. The Champions League match kicked off at 3am Malaysian time on 21 October.

Georges Mikautadze put the visitors ahead in the fourth minute, and Sergi Cardona Bermúdez doubled the lead in the 29th minute from Nathan-Dylan Saliba’s pass. Liverpool’s own match report says the opener came after Virgil van Dijk misplaced a header back to Alisson Becker. Mac Allister pulled one back in the 36th minute, heading in a corner from Konstantinos Tsimikas. Ronald Araujo levelled at 45+2’, also with a header, from Rio Ngumoha’s cross.

Ngumoha set up Mac Allister again in the 65th minute. Three minutes later Florian Wirtz made it 4-2 from Cody Gakpo’s pass. Ayoze Pérez hit the post for Villarreal before Tani Oluwaseyi scored in the 87th minute, and Liverpool saw out the rest of the match.

Andoni Iraola made six changes to his starting line-up, according to the club, and the attendance was 59,610. The club also says Ngumoha became the youngest player in its history to provide an assist in European competition, aged 18 years and 52 days, citing Opta. Mac Allister told Amazon Prime that “if you look at the game today it was far from perfect”, the club reports.

The result gives Liverpool three wins from three in the league stage, after a 2-1 home win over Atlético Madrid on 10 September and a 6-3 win away to LASK on 15 October. The club puts their points total in the competition at nine, and counts this as a third successive win in all competitions.

Liverpool visit Fenerbahçe in the Champions League on 5 November, kicking off at 1.45am Malaysian time.