Jamie Carragher was openly critical of Alisson Becker following the decisive penalty incident that handed Manchester City a stoppage-time victory at Anfield on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Liverpool had taken the lead through Dominik Szoboszlai\u2019s stunning long-range free-kick, but Bernardo Silva restored parity, leaving the sides locked at 1-1 as the game moved into added time \u2014 when chaos ensued.<\/p>\n
In the 91st minute, Alisson collided with Matheus Nunes inside the penalty area, prompting referee Craig Pawson to award a spot-kick. Erling Haaland made no mistake from 12 yards, scoring what proved to be the winning goal.<\/p>\n
The drama did not end there. Rayan Cherki thought he had added another in the dying moments, only for VAR to intervene. The review resulted in Szoboszlai being shown a red card for denying City\u2019s No.9 a clear goalscoring opportunity as both players chased a loose ball towards the line.<\/p>\n
Carragher criticises Alisson decision<\/p>\n
Speaking on Sky Sports after the final whistle, Carragher questioned Alisson\u2019s judgement, describing the incident as an unnecessary rush of blood that ultimately cost Liverpool the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of Liverpool\u2019s season has been defined by unbelievable mistakes from top-level players,\u201d Carragher said. \u201cVan Dijk at Bournemouth, Alisson today. You just can\u2019t understand how a goalkeeper of his quality makes that decision to give away a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n
A costly error on another frustrating day for the Reds<\/p>\n
There were serious questions over whether Alisson even needed to come off his line, with the ball appearing likely to run out for a goal kick before the collision with Nunes.<\/p>\n
While the Brazilian may have feared the City midfielder could reach the ball and create a shooting chance, the 33-year-old misjudged the situation and left Pawson with an easy call.<\/p>\n
Liverpool were forced to accept responsibility for that error, but several other incidents left a bitter taste. The VAR call that resulted in Szoboszlai\u2019s dismissal was one, while Marc Gu\u00e9hi also escaped with just a yellow card for pulling Mohamed Salah\u2019s shirt in what could have been deemed a denial of a goalscoring opportunity.<\/p>\n
Once again, fine margins went against the Reds. The defeat leaves Liverpool five points behind fourth-placed Manchester United and facing a steep uphill battle to rescue their Champions League hopes after a disastrous weekend on Merseyside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jamie Carragher was openly critical of Alisson Becker following the decisive penalty incident that handed Manchester City a stoppage-time victory at Anfield on Sunday. Liverpool had taken the lead through Dominik Szoboszlai\u2019s stunning long-range free-kick, but Bernardo Silva restored parity, leaving the sides locked at 1-1 as the game moved into added time \u2014 when …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":58543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/carragher-sky-sports-1200x674.jpg-1.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58544,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58542\/revisions\/58544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}