Liverpool vs Crystal Palace LIVE: Premier League result and final score as Reds suffer shock defeat

Mikel Arteta, on this occasion at least, wasn’t going to play any mind games. When asked after Arsenal’s win over Luton Town whether he would be watching the matches of Manchester City and Liverpool, he nodded happily. There was no sense of just concentrating on his own team. Arteta said he simply enjoyed watching good football, but his interest was obviously far more invested than that.

As the gatecrasher to English football’s main title rivalry, Arsenal have the most to learn. Their very presence at the top of the table, however, also gives both Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola something to learn. Neither managerial great has ever been involved in a three-team title race, across 38 combined seasons.

Both have admitted to feeling a new excitement about it, as well as a different tension. There’s a crackle, that sense of event in almost every match. You can feel that gripping tension before each game, and it’s now in three dressing rooms. As evenings stretch out and nerves tighten, there’s nothing like it.

There’s certainly been little like this in English football, let alone in the Premier League era. A storied 124 seasons since the league’s formation in 1888 have only witnessed 11 campaigns where there were three teams which could have considered themselves involved in a proper title run-in. Only seven of those involved at least three sides finishing within a win of each other on the final day.

Miguel Delaney on the big title fight:

Sporting CP manager Ruben Amorim has insisted he has not been interviewed by Liverpool, let alone reached a verbal agreement to take over from Jurgen Klopp in the summer.

The 39-year-old Portuguese has emerged as a candidate to move to Anfield, especially when Xabi Alonso, who had been seen as the favourite, decided he was going to stay at Bayer Leverkusen for another season.

Liverpool are doing their due diligence into a number of options and have yet to identify their preferred choice while Amorim rebuffed reports in his home country and in Germany that he has accepted a deal by saying he is yet to speak to the Merseyside club.

Liverpool lost their unbeaten record at Anfield, perhaps any realistic chance of European glory, probably the farewell so many envisaged. But that wasn’t all. “We lost the plot a little bit,” said Jurgen Klopp. The German can seem to write his own story. He had supplied the twist in the plot with the sudden announcement of his resignation. Now the final chapter is starting to look very different. The treble may become the single, the Carabao Cup Klopp’s last trophy. Three days after what may now be his last match, Atalanta could win the Europa League. This was not the script Liverpool wanted.

Instead of building to a climax, the danger is that Klopp’s reign peters out. They have lost a first leg in Europe 3-0 before and staged a stirring, stunning comeback, but Barcelona may forever remain a one-off. Anfield has been the scene of some wonderful European nights under Klopp, but an evisceration by Atalanta was probably his worst on home soil and definitely Liverpool’s joint heaviest in continental competition on Merseyside. After going unbeaten for 33 games at Anfield, the fortress was stormed by a side 32 points behind the leaders in Serie A.

“This was probably a low point for us performance-wise, I would say, for a long time,” said Klopp. “We can make this the shortest press conference.” He didn’t, though, instead delivering a damning analysis. “It was a really bad game: oh my God. A lot of performances tonight were really ‘oops, wow, I didn’t know they could play like that’. A lot of the players looked really alone in a lot of moments. It was really bad.”

Jurgen Klopp has promised his Liverpool players will show a reaction to their shock 3-0 Europa League home defeat to Atalanta when they host Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Sunday.

Liverpool’s hopes of ending Klopp’s reign with a showpiece European final in Dublin are in real jeopardy after Atalanta punished a lacklustre display to inflict the Reds’ first home defeat in 14 months.

The second leg of the quarter-final tie will be played in Bergamo next week, but before then Liverpool’s attention returns to the intense three-way fight at the top of the Premier League, and a match against Oliver Glasner’s Palace side.

Good afternoon and welcome to The Independent’s coverage of Liverpool against Crystal Palace. Kick-off is about two hours away, with the Reds looking to rediscover form and give their title ambitions a push following a dismal midweek showing in Europe.

For Palace, another win or two are still required for certain safety, but for Oliver Glasner it’s really about shaping his team and assessing the squad ahead of a full campaign in charge next year.