Liverpool Vs West Ham — liverpool vs west ham: Five-star display heaps more pressure
liverpool vs west ham ended in a 5-2 rout at Anfield as Arne Slot’s side converted set-piece superiority into three corner goals and a commanding half-time lead. The result moved Liverpool up to fifth in the Premier League and left West Ham facing both footballing and financial strain.
Set-piece mastery and early opener
The game was three up for the Reds at half-time of Saturday’s Premier League game at Anfield thanks to corner goals from Hugo Ekitiké, Virgil van Dijk and Alexis Mac Allister. The first goal arrived when El Hadji Malick Diouf cleared the first corner of the afternoon but Ryan Gravenberch returned a fine ball into the France international; Ekitiké took his shot early and it nestled into Mads Hermansen’s bottom corner a slight deflection off Konstantinos Mavropanos. Both the West Ham centre-half and goalkeeper could have done more.
Liverpool Vs West Ham: Second and third goals
Van Dijk then headed home Dominik Szoboszlai’s delivery after bumping aside Soungoutou Magassa and beating Tomas Soucek to the ball — the captain’s second set-piece goal in three games and Liverpool’s seventh of the year. The third set-piece goal, a sequence that began with Mohamed Salah’s corner from the right, saw Van Dijk flick on at the near post, Ekitiké cushion the ball out to Alexis Mac Allister and Mac Allister volley into the roof of the net the head of Aaron Wan-Bissaka. The ball did not touch the ground from the moment it left Salah’s foot.
West Ham response and second-half swings
The visitors had moments: West Ham produced a better xG than Liverpool and opened the hosts up frequently, with Mateus Fernandes and Crysencio Summerville to the fore. Jarrod Bowen’s corner landed at the feet of Konstantinos Mavropanos, who scooped wildly over, and Mac Allister worked tirelessly to cut out a dangerous counterattack led by Summerville. The game was effectively over by half-time, and Alexis Mac Allister’s brilliant volley in the 43rd minute extinguished the visitors’ hope.
Late goals and final sequence
Tomas Soucek made it 3-1 shortly after the restart, but Cody Gakpo restored Liverpool’s three-goal cushion. Valentin Castellanos then scored for the visitors to make it 4-2, and an own goal by Axel Disasi — the defender inadvertently diverting Jeremie Frimpong’s cross into his own net — rounded off the scoring late on, the full-time score 5-2.
Coaches, quotes and context
Nuno Espírito Santo, reflecting on his side’s performance, said: “If I say it was a good performance I sound silly. But that’s what I saw. ” The visitors’ prospects of avoiding relegation look bleak in the context of such a heavy defeat, though Nuno could take encouragement from elements of his team’s display. Liverpool’s goalkeeper Alisson was in fine form, saving well from Soucek and making a grateful stop from Bowen after a clearance hit back at the visiting captain.
Off-field contrasts and Slot on set-pieces
The contrasting positions of the clubs were stark this 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, while West Ham warned that players will have to be sold this summer whether they stay up or not after suffering a £104. 2m loss in the same financial year. Compounding the day’s misfortune for West Ham, their bus got stuck on a ramp while attempting to leave the team hotel.
Arne Slot praised the set-piece returns in his post-match press conference. “That’s very pleasing. First of all, because that’s the reason why we won [and] second of all, because when I was just standing around your colleagues people said, ‘Well played, well played, ’ and I said, ‘In my opinion, we’ve played better this season. ’ We played OK to good – so, we were OK to good but it wasn’t the best game of the season, ” he said. Slot added that “things went back to normal” with set-pieces after a period when Liverpool were poor at defending and scoring from them earlier in the season, a slump that resulted in the departure of the set-piece coach Aaron Briggs in December.
Slot noted past deficits against rivals on set-pieces: there was a period when Liverpool were 23 goals behind Arsenal in set-pieces, including penalties, and he said the gap has been closed somewhat — “we’re still not only three goals away from them but we’ve closed the gap a little bit. ” He also warned that outcomes can still change quickly in the league.
A third successive top-flight victory leaves Slot’s side level on points with fourth-placed Manchester United, who play on Sunday, and three adrift of Aston Villa in third. Wirtz missed the game through injury, and Slot was asked whether the No. 7 is expected to be fit for Tuesday’s visit to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The result underlined how set-pieces have swung a game: Liverpool have now scored more set-piece goals than any other team in the division — excluding penalties — in 2026, and the three corner goals here took their set-piece total to eight for the calendar year.
Final score: Liverpool 5, West Ham 2.
