Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after West Ham United 0 Liverpool 2 in the 2025-2026 Premier League at the London Stadium…
YOU’VE SEEN The Reds win it all. You’ve seen The Reds at the highest of highs. You’ve seen The Reds win in Madrid to seal a sixth European Cup. You’ve seen The Reds go to Leicester City after the Club World Cup and win creating a league winning gap. You’ve seen The Reds beat Tottenham to win our twentieth title. You’ve seen The Reds do everything that could be asked.
But you’ve probably not been as relieved to see The Reds win as you were today.
When Cody Gakpo scores your head, your shoulders, your back just unravel. The knots disappear. There it is. There is what you’ve needed for what has felt like the longest time.
You’re not kidding yourself. You’re not kidding your mates. Nothing is sorted but we all know this:
Everything has to start somewhere.
We all know this:
Everything good in life is about finding a way to put one foot in front of another.
Today Liverpool put one foot in front of another.
Today Liverpool aren’t good between the red card and 0-2. But it doesn’t matter because they have decided that it won’t be happening today. Today Liverpool attack well but not perfectly but that doesn’t matter either because Liverpool gamble the farm on one of their good players doing something special.
Florian Wirtz does lots of special things but Alexander Isak does the most special thing and when he does you understand, not for the first time, that there is a reason why the lads who play furthest forward, who are the focal point of the attack, earn the most money and cost the most money.
Alexander Isak isn’t fit. You aren’t kidding yourself about that either. He still lacks a burst of pace but suddenly you get to see the game changing quality.
There is much chat about Liverpool’s summer, Liverpool’s plans, about what the long-term is meant to be. For me much of it misses the essence of what the game is about – having match-changing differences in penalty areas. That’s what Liverpool invested in.
You know that you shouldn’t get carried away with decisions made today by the manager. What he does today isn’t the whole plan because there can never be a whole plan. It’s football. But what he does do today is put Isak and Wirtz in the centre of the pitch to start with.
“To start with” is the key aspect of this. In tons of ways the one thing you never want from your number 10 is that he only ever gets the ball in the middle of the pitch, forty yards out. Today you see Wirtz pull this way and that. You see him drop deep and you see him try and stretch it.
But more than that, more than anything, you see his quality, his touch and awareness, his anticipation. You see him play a sumptuous game of football in the first-half and graft in the second. He needs a goal and the only shortcoming is that the moment the goal is there is his sole moment without conviction but other than that what he does is marvellous.
He goes where the space is.
Elsewhere the manager makes two other big calls. One is to pick Joe Gomez and the other is to pick Ibou Konate. For the first hour you see Virgil van Dijk urge, cajole and congratulate Ibou Konate’s every good touch and intervention. But Konate also starts to pass well. This is so, so important. It’s the bellwether for his performances and today he is excellent.
Joe Gomez though comes in from the cold and looks like what he is to his fingers and toes: A Liverpool player. Joe is an asset to every team he plays in and today is no exception.
There has been a lot of chat this season about who Liverpool’s best right-back is and Gomez today makes his application for the role. He repeatedly delivers well but being a Liverpool player is about managing emotions, about staying cool in the maelstrom. Joe Gomez is the coolest cat and he will always do for you.
What else? Cody Gakpo looked the part throughout. Alexis Mac Allister was a bit wobbly but was as determined as anyone that today was Liverpool’s. The captain and the left-back both played well.
Again, you know these are amongst the poorest sides we have seen this season. You know this. You know that everything starts again from nil on Wednesday and you know that this Liverpool now has everything to prove from scratch again – but then there is no other way to do it.
You want to see Liverpool show this level of seriousness for the rest of this challenge. One step at a time. All to be taken together. One foot in front of the other. In the meantime though you’re so relieved you could burst.
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