Arne slots in seamlessly to leave Ten Hag humiliated

A retirement game for Casemiro, another reckoning for Erik ten Hag and – maybe even more importantly – an arrival match for Arne Slot. The new Liverpool manager’s biggest win and easiest game so far was the one that was supposed to be the most testing: a 3-0 at his club’s greatest rivals.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

Then again, this was just another in a modern series of handsome Liverpool victories over Manchester United, even at Old Trafford. The results stay the same even as the faces change. Well, some of the faces.

Before the inevitable obituary for Casemiro’s top-level career, it is worth celebrating how good Luis Diaz and Mohammed Salah were, particularly given how both have had their own futures questioned. The Colombian was newly clinical. Salah was both selfless in setting up the second and brilliantly tunnel-visioned in claiming Liverpool’s third.

Only two of them were a consequence of Casemiro’s tragically declining abilities as a midfielder. It is genuinely sad to see someone who was so brilliant reduced to this, even as Liverpool revelled in it.

For all that so much of the post-game analysis will inevitably labour on Casemiro’s pass to the resurgent Ryan Gravenberch and then the way he lost the ball to Diaz for the Colombian’s second, there is something bigger here. Liverpool didn’t get the No 6 that Slot wanted either, in what could have been a damagingly public failed pursuit of Real Sociedad’s Martin Zubimendi. There were even shades of how David Moyes couldn’t get Cesc Fabregas to Manchester United in 2013.