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5 hours ago
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The contrasting strengths of Liverpool and West Ham are reflected on the balance sheet, the team sheet and ultimately the score sheet. Arne Slot’s side improved their prospects of Champions League qualification with a peculiar victory at Anfield, the winning margin far more resounding than the performance.
In the week Liverpool announced record overall revenue of £703m in their latest accounts, most of it ploughed back into the bank balances of a title-winning team, West Ham warned that players will have to be sold this summer whether they stay up or not having suffered a £104.2m loss in the same financial year. Their prospects of avoiding relegation look bleak in the context of such a heavy defeat yet, strange as it seems, Nuno Espírito Santo could take encouragement from elements of West Ham’s display.
The visitors had a better xG than Liverpool but found Alisson in fine form and the champions devastating at set pieces. West Ham must have known it was not going to be their day when their bus got stuck on a ramp while attempting to leave the team hotel. “If I say it was a good performance I sound silly,” said Nuno. “But that’s what I saw.”
And yet this game was effectively over by half-time. As damning as that was for West Ham, they retained hope of getting back into the contest before Alexis Mac Allister extinguished it in the 43rd minute. The midfielder’s brilliant volley was the third Liverpool goal to originate from a corner as Slot’s side continued their metamorphosis into the Premier League’s set-piece specialists.
Poor at defending them and scoring from them in the first half of the season, resulting in the departure of the set-piece coach Aaron Briggs in December, Liverpool have now scored more set-piece goals than any other team in the division – excluding penalties – in 2026. West Ham were defensively weak as Liverpool took their set-piece goals total to eight for the calendar year.
Hugo Ekitiké gave the hosts an early lead after El Hadji Malick Diouf had cleared the first corner of the afternoon. Ryan Gravenberch returned a fine ball into the France international, who took his shot early and saw it nestle into Mads Hermansen’s bottom corner via a slight deflection off Konstantinos Mavropanos. Both the West Ham centre-half and goalkeeper could have done more.
The visitors responded well to their first setback. Mateus Fernandes and Crysencio Summerville were to the fore as Liverpool were opened up frequently, but West Ham could not find a finishing touch. Mavropanos scooped wildly over when a Jarrod Bowen corner landed at his feet and Mac Allister worked tirelessly to cut out a dangerous counterattack led by Summerville. The threat from West Ham was growing, then Liverpool scored another simple goal from a corner.
Virgil van Dijk headed home Dominik Szoboszlai’s delivery after bumping aside Soungoutou Magassa and beating Tomas Soucek to the ball. It was the Liverpool captain’s second set-piece goal in three games and his team’s seventh of the year. Number eight was executed brilliantly. Mohamed Salah took a corner from the right, Van Dijk flicked on at the near post, Ekitiké cushioned the ball out to Mac Allister and he volleyed into the roof of the net via the head of Aaron Wan-Bissaka. The ball did not touch the ground from the moment it left Salah’s foot.
West Ham had their moments before the third goal, Alisson saving well from Soucek and gratefully from Bowen after hitting a clearance straight at the visiting captain, but were in for a long afternoon. To their credit, Nuno’s side did not concede to the inevitable. Soucek reduced the arrears early in the second half when sliding in to convert Diouf’s low cross.
Anfield became noticeably edgy as errors crept into the Liverpool display and both Fernandes and Summerville drew good stops from Alisson. But Cody Gakpo restored the host’s three goal cushion when his low shot struck Wan-Bissaka and deflected into the far corner.
West Ham responded once again when Bowen’s corner sailed over a crowded six-yard box and Taty Castellanos scored with a free header at the back post. But a late, unfortunate own goal by Axel Disasi, who deflected a low cross from the Liverpool substitute Jeremie Frimpong beyond Hermansen, compounded a punishing day for West Ham. “You’re going down with Prince Andrew,” taunted the Kop.
Slot reflected: “I’m very pleased with the set pieces, firstly because that is the reason we won and secondly because we played OK-to-good. We’ve played better this season and lost. We’ve started scoring from set pieces and things look brighter and better than when you don’t.”
