Friday 21 December 2018 12:17, UK
Liverpool's Xherdan Shaqiri has revealed friends have labelled him the man who got rid of Jose Mourinho, following his heroics against Manchester United.
The 27-year-old came on as a second-half substitute for Jurgen Klopp's side at Anfield last Sunday, and transformed the scoreline to give Liverpool a 3-1 victory over their bitter rivals.
The win put Liverpool clear at the summit of the Premier League and 19 points ahead of United.
Jose Mourinho was subsequently sacked as United's manager on Tuesday, and Shaqiri's phone has since been buzzing with messages joking about the repercussions of his goals.
"I had a lot of messages from my friends when it happened," Shaqiri said in an interview with The Guardian.
"There were a lot of good messages about the United game at first and then, when the news came out about Mourinho, I had messages saying: 'That's your fault!' But this is football sometimes.
"I don't think it was just because we won that game that United wanted to change their manager.
"There were other reasons but it means the game goes down in history. It will always be in my history too."
Liverpool return to action on Friday night with a trip to Wolves, live on Sky Sports, and can go four points clear of Manchester City with victory.
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Whether Shaqiri's derby heroics will guarantee him a starting position or not remains to be seen, although the Switzerland international accepts it is part of playing for Liverpool.
"Every player wants to play, that's pretty normal," he said. "Every player is unhappy when he's on the bench, that's pretty normal too. But it's football, only 11 players can start and the coach has his game-plan for each game."
