Liverpool’s unbeaten run in Premier League ends

Ismaila Sarr inspired the extraordinary upset, stunning Liverpool with two goals in six second-half minutes before he set up captain Troy Deeney with a third for the team which had started the day one from bottom, 55 points behind the runaway leader.

Liverpool’s first league defeat of the season meant the end of its hopes of going the whole league campaign as unbeaten as the new ‘Invincibles’ after 44 league matches without a defeat.It also came on the evening when it was expected to surpass champion Manchester City by creating a new English top-flight record of 19 successive league victories.

The setback will doubtless not stop Juergen Klopp’s men going on to lift their first English title for 30 years as they still remain 22 points ahead of their nearest pursuers, yet their season’s aura of domestic invincibility has now been demolished.Liverpool had previously dropped only two points in the league this season — its draw at Manchester United in October — but from the start, Watford attacked it with unexpected vigour.

Watford had looked the more likely to break the deadlock in the first half with Gerard Deulofeu proving Liverpool’s main tormentor before he was taken off by stretcher with a knee injury.Yet it was only when Sarr struck twice just before the hour mark and then turned provider for Deeney to shoot home a third that the ‘mission impossible’became a reality.

Klopp’s champion-elect served up its worst performance of the year as it was outplayed by Watford.“I see it rather positive because from now on we can play free football again. We don’t have to defend or try to get a record, we can just try to win football games again and that is what we will do,” Klopp told reporters atVicarage Road.

Asked if there was any disappointment, he added: “Not really, because I don’t think you can break records because you want to break records; you break records because you are 100 percent focused on each step. And for that you have to perform.”