Premier League star who REJECTED Liverpool hands them the title

It’s fair to say that Liverpool didn’t look on their finest form against Southampton this afternoon.

They managed to take the lead due to some fairly calamitous defending handed the ball straight to Dominik Szoboszlai on the edge of the box. The Hungarian finished brilliantly.

But after this, defensive errors galore meant that Liverpool saw themselves 2-1 down to the bottom-placed side, staring into the face of a missed opportunity to go eight points clear at the top of the league.

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The rest of the second half, however, became the Mo Salah show. Liverpool’s Egyptian talisman scored twice to hand the Reds a necessary 3-2 victory.

Salah’s first goal, the one that made it 2-2, was helped on its way due to a quizzical error by Southampton goalkeeper Alex McCarthy.

Ryan Gravenberch played a long ball over the top of the defence into the no man’s land behind. McCarthy raced out to the edge of the box but a good few meters out to the side of his goal. Salah got there first and poked it first time into the empty net McCarthy had vacated.

Liverpool wanted to sign McCarthy

It was McCarthy’s first start in three months, and his rustiness was evident. But perhaps things could have been different had he ever entertained Liverpool’s interest in him.

As we have reported before, Liverpool tried to sign McCarthy back in 2014. Then-manager Brendan Rodgers wanted competition for Simon Mignolet inbetween the sticks and he has worked with McCarthy at Reading.

McCarthy ended up signing for QPR, and said “At this moment in time, I think I made the right decision” in an interview back then.

Liverpool then again tried to sign McCarthy in 2019, with the Echo reporting at the time that he was a strong candidate to become Alisson’s backup after Mignolet left.

Liverpool were reported to be trying one more time for McCarthy’s services last year, despite the emergence of Caoimhin Kelleher. Obviously, that deal did not occur.

And we are thanking our lucky stars that it didn’t. Liverpool were struggling to create clear cut chances today and, at 2-1 down, could have had their entire season change.

McCarthy’s misjudgement changed everything. So whilst he may not be plying his trade for the Reds, we have a lot to thank him for.

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