Salah scores on return as Liverpool ease to 4-1 win over Brentford

LONDON :Mohamed Salah scored on his return from injury as Liverpool kept their foot on the throttle in the Premier League title race with a 4-1 win at Brentford on Saturday to go provisionally five points clear at the summit.

Darwin Nunez opened the scoring with an exquisite first-half chip, and goals after the break from Alexis Mac Allister and Salah, who was playing his first game for Liverpool in over six weeks after suffering a hamstring injury at the Africa Cup of Nations, effectively ended the contest.

Ivan Toney pulled one back for Brentford, but Cody Gakpo grabbed Liverpool's fourth to wrap up a comfortable win for the visitors.

The victory lifted Liverpool to 57 points and put the ball back in the court of chasers Manchester City in second and third-placed Arsenal, who are both on 52 but can reduce the deficit later on Saturday.

In what is shaping up to be one of the tightest title races in years, Pep Guardiola's City side, arguably still in the box seat with two games in hand, host Chelsea in Saturday's late game after Arsenal visit Burnley.

While his side cruised to a sixth win in their last seven league games, there was a sour note for Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp, who was already dealing with a lengthy injury list before Curtis Jones and Diogo Jota were taken off in the first half and Nunez failed to emerge after halftime.

The Liverpool manager was already without a number of key players through injury including goalkeeper Alisson Becker, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Dominik Szoboszlai.

"That's really not good. But we can't change that anymore," Klopp told reporters when asked about the latest injuries.

"In these situations the performance level could have dropped, but it was the other way around. We played an