Former Man City goalkeeper Joe Hart criticised one Liverpool star for his Reds performance at the Etihad Stadium this afternoon.
Man City 4-0 Liverpool as Sky Blues cruise into FA Cup semis
City were absolutely ruthless today, Erling Haaland was inevitable, and by the time the final whistle sounded at the Etihad, Arne Slot’s side had been beaten 4-0 in the FA Cup quarter-final — knocked out of the last competition in which domestic silverware remained possible.
The cruel irony is that Liverpool were not poor for long stretches of the first half.
They pressed with purpose, created openings, and for the best part of 40 minutes looked like a side capable of causing problems.
Hugo Ekitike drew fouls, Florian Wirtz probed in pockets, and the game felt genuinely open. Then, in the space of a few minutes before the break, Liverpool’s familiar vulnerability at the back undid everything they had built.
Virgil van Dijk misjudged his challenge on Nico O’Reilly in the box, conceding a penalty that Haaland dispatched with the kind of cold certainty that has become his calling card.
Moments later, Rayan Cherki — the best player on the pitch bar Haaland — picked out Antoine Semenyo’s run down the right, whose cross arrived perfectly for the Norwegian to beat Ibrahima Konate to the ball and head emphatically into the far corner.
Two defensive errors in a matter of minutes had turned a competitive contest into a crisis.
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Pep Lijnders, managing from the touchline with Pep Guardiola serving a suspension and watching from the stands, knew exactly where Liverpool’s weaknesses lay. He spent years learning them from the inside.
The second half was a procession.
Semenyo got his deserved goal — a confident, guided header over Giorgi Mamardashvili to make it 3-0 and kill any surviving hope of a Liverpool comeback.
Haaland then completed his hat-trick, his eleventh for City, finishing a slick team move to put the gloss on a performance that was, at its best, genuinely impressive.
City are into the FA Cup semi-finals for a record eighth consecutive season, and Liverpool are out of another cup competition.
Joe Hart makes Mohamed Salah claim after Liverpool defeat to Man City
It was against this backdrop that Mohamed Salah — making his first appearance since announcing he will leave Anfield at the end of the season — endured the kind of afternoon nobody wanted for him.
His 25th and final game against City as a Liverpool player should have carried something of the weight and drama that has characterised so many of those previous meetings.
Instead, it produced only frustration.
He had flickers of involvement in the first half, a missed connection here, a promising run there, but when the chance to leave a mark finally came — a penalty with the score already at 4-0 — Trafford pushed it away and the moment was gone.
Ex-England and City keeper Hart, watching on as a pundit for TNT Sports, did not dress it up.
It was “difficult watching him,” Hart said, adding that Salah had “struggled” throughout and looked “low on confidence.”
Coming from someone with no allegiance to Liverpool, the concern in those words felt genuine rather than dismissive.
This is a man who has scored 255 goals for the club, who has defined an era on Merseyside — and he is running out of time to sign off on his own terms.
Slot’s side must now dust themselves off ahead of their Champions League quarter-final at PSG on Tuesday.
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