Harry Maguire hands Manchester United late win over misfiring Liverpool

Harry Maguire’s late header secured Manchester United’s first win at Anfield in almost a decade and gave head coach Ruben Amorim back-to-back league victories for the first time in his tenure.

The visitors looked to have been denied by Cody Gakpo’s 78th-minute equaliser, but centre-back Maguire became the latest player to expose Liverpool’s weakness at set-pieces with a powerful header.

United had ridden their luck after Bryan Mbeumo scored the quickest Premier League goal – after 62 seconds – on this ground between the two sides, with Gakpo hitting the frame of the goal three times, but his most glaring miss came with three minutes to go when he planted a close-range header wide of an open goal.

While United, now only two points behind their arch-rivals, and Amorim will feel they have turned a corner with possibly the standout result of his reign so far, Arne Slot is left to consider what has gone wrong with his misfiring side.

Liverpool lost a fourth successive match for the first time since November 2014 and a first home league game for 400 days.

Amorim opted to leave £66million striker Benjamin Sesko on the bench and go with a mobile front three of Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Mason Mount.

It was justified in the first half, with the former two and Bruno Fernandes particularly effective in giving the left side of Liverpool’s defence – Virgil van Dijk and Milos Kerkez – a real test and that was the avenue from which their early goal arrived.

Van Dijk caught Alexis Mac Allister as the pair jumped with Mbeumo for an aerial ball and the United forward ran on to collect Amad Diallo’s pass and clip a shot between the gap between Giorgi Mamardashvili’s left arm and thigh.

It was the seventh successive game without a clean sheet for Slot’s side and gave United the ideal platform to execute their game plan of getting the ball forward quickly and trying to work patterns through the gaps in Liverpool’s defence.

Mac Allister had the bleeding wound treated and returned wearing a skull cap and set about trying to inspire a fightback against a team who were happy to drop into a 5-4-1 formation and go long at every opportunity.

Van Dijk headed wide, Gakpo beat goalkeeper Senne Lammens but was denied by a post and Alexander Isak bundled a weak shot wide before Gakpo’s deflected cross dropped over Lammens but on to the crossbar.

Fernandes hit the outside of Mamardashvili’s left-hand post as United continued to pose a threat and when the goalkeeper spilled Cunha’s cross Mount fired over.

Isak squandered Liverpool’s best chance when sent clear by Ibrahima Konate, with Lammens sticking out a right boot to save his angled shot.

The second half swung more towards Liverpool, with United content to sit on their lead, but they struggled to find clear-cut opportunities, Gakpo hitting an upright again and Mac Allister shooting over.

Slot’s triple substitution just past the hour saw Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike and Curtis Jones arrive in a switch to 4-2-4, but they continued to be wasteful in front of goal, with Mohamed Salah slashing wide from Kerkez’s cross to the far post.

Ekitike did inject some goal threat before Wirtz teed up fellow substitute Federico Chiesa to cross for Gakpo to tap home.

However, Liverpool again failed to deal with a cross following a corner and Maguire headed in his first league goal since February to seal United’s first win at Anfield since 2016, with Gakpo less proficient in the air when he should have snatched a point.