Eintracht Frankfurt 1-5 Liverpool: Emphatic Reds return to winning ways with thumping victory

Liverpool thumped Eintracht Frankfurt 5-1 in the Champions League to end a run of four straight defeats in all competitions on Wednesday.

The Reds were beaten 2-1 by Manchester United on Sunday to continue a miserable run that included a 1-0 reverse to Galatasaray in matchday two.

It looked like things could worsen at Deutsch Bank Arena when Rasmus Kristensen fired the hosts ahead, but former Eintracht forward Hugo Ekitike restored parity before Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate scored from corners before half-time to turn the game on its head.

Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai were then on target after the break as Liverpool returned to winning ways in emphatic fashion.

Alexander Isak was twice thwarted by Michael Zetterer by the time Kristensen fired through the legs of Andrew Robertson and past Giorgi Mamardashvili into the bottom-left corner with Eintracht's first attack.

But Liverpool were level by 35 minutes when Ekitike raced onto Robertson's throughball and coolly slotted past Zetterer one-on-one before apologising to the fans of his former club.

Van Dijk's powerful point-blank header from Gakpo's corner put Liverpool ahead, before Szoboszlai's corner - this time from the right - was thumped in by the head of Konate just before half-time.

Florian Wirtz saw a free-kick well saved by Zetterer before providing the assist for Gakpo to slide home the fourth, and Szoboszlai brilliantly drilled home low from 25 yards to add further gloss with 20 minutes remaining.

Data Debrief: Van Dijk head and shoulders above the rest

Liverpool had looked out of sorts before and after the October international break but were back to their fluent best here.

Van Dijk led by example to put the visitors in front and all five of his Champions League goals have come via headers from a corner. Indeed, he has scored 30 goals in all competitions for Liverpool, 26 of which have been headed. 

Since his debut for the club in January 2018, the only player to score more headers for a single Premier League club is Harry Kane for Tottenham (34).

Ekitike was apologetic for his goal against his ex-employees and the Frenchman is now the first player to score both and against Eintracht in major European competition.