Mohamed Salah’s double helped Liverpool pass a huge test of its Premier League title credentials after winning at in-form Bournemouth 2-0 and establishing a nine-point lead on Saturday.
High-flying rival Nottingham Forest also made a statement of its own in a record rout of Brighton by 7-0.
Salah moved above Chelsea great Frank Lampard to sixth on the all-time Premier League scoring chart, on 178 goals, by converting a 30th-minute penalty and curling in a beautiful second in the 75th.
The Egypt forward has 21 goals in what could be his last Premier League campaign with Liverpool, with whom his contract is up at the end of the season. It's the fifth time he has netted 20 or more league goals in a single season for the club.
It ended Bournemouth’s 11-match unbeaten run in the league and left Liverpool with a commanding advantage over both second-placed Arsenal and third-placed Forest, which bounced back from a 5-0 loss last weekend — also at Bournemouth — by demolishing Brighton for its biggest victory in the Premier League era.
Chris Wood scored a hat trick for Forest, which is on course to qualify for a European competition next season — potentially even the Champions League by securing a finish in the top four or five.
Arsenal hosts Manchester City on Sunday and will look to trim the gap to Liverpool back down to six points.
Liverpool gets lucky but Alexander-Arnold injured
Liverpool will be tough to stop now, with just 15 games left of a campaign in which Arne Slot's team has shown plenty of resilience to lose only once.
The Dutch manager acknowledged Liverpool's latest win came with a hint of fortune, with Bournemouth twice hitting the post and seeing Justin Kluivert shooting wide in front of an open goal.
“If you want to win here, maybe you need a bit of luck because the margins are so small,” Slot said.
"It was a close call for us to win this game. We weren’t unlucky, let’s put it that way.”
Liverpool right back Trent Alexander-Arnold went off in the 70th with a suspected thigh injury and will undergo a scan. Slot said he would “be surprised” if Alexander-Arnold played against Tottenham in the second leg of the English League Cup semifinals on Thursday, when Liverpool will look to overturn a 1-0 deficit.
Record Premier League win for Forest
Wood, a 33-year-old New Zealand international enjoying the most prolific Premier League season of his career, took his tally to 17 goals with his hat trick. Wood is behind only Salah (21) and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (18) in the race for the Golden Boot.
Morgan Gibbs-White, Neco Williams and Jota Silva also scored after an own-goal by Lewis Dunk set the ball rolling at the City Ground for third-placed Forest, which is the surprise of the Premier League this season and moved level on 47 points with Arsenal.
“What a difference a week can make,” Wood said, referring to Forest's heavy loss at Bournemouth. “Last week wasn't us. Today was definitely us.”
Forest battled to avoid relegation last season but now has a great chance of qualifying for the Champions League, which would put the club back in Europe’s elite — where it was two generations ago when winning the European Cup in 1979 and 1980.
Doucoure scores after just 10 seconds
Abdoulaye Doucoure scored the fourth-fastest goal in Premier League history — after just 10.18 seconds, according to the competition's statistic supplier, Opta — to set Everton on course for a 4-0 win over Leicester.
From the kickoff, the ball went back to goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, who launched a long clearance toward the Leicester area and directly into the path of Doucoure. The midfielder surged into the area and slotted home.
It was the earliest Everton has ever scored in the Premier League, the fourth fastest goal in the competition’s history, and the quickest ever by a home player.
Beto, a striker filling in for the injured Dominic Calvert-Lewin, scored twice in the first half and Iliman Ndiaye added a late fourth to complete a third straight win for recently hired Everton manager David Moyes, who is enjoying a fine start to his second spell in charge.
Leicester was coming off a win at Tottenham that eased the pressure on manager Ruud van Nistelrooy but dropped them into the relegation zone. They were overtaken by Wolverhampton after its 2-0 win over Aston Villa in the late game thanks to goals by Jean-Ricner Bellegarde and Matheus Cunha.
Ahead of the game, Villa was linked with a move for Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford, having sold Colombia international Jhon Duran to Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia on Friday.
Fulham came from behind to beat Newcastle 2-1 away after goals by strikers Raul Jimenez and Rodrigo Muniz, while last-placed Southampton won by the same score at Ipswich thanks to Paul Onuachu's 87th-minute goal for just a second victory in the league.
Still, Southampton was only on nine points and 10 points from safety.
___
Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80
___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Steve Douglas, The Associated Press
