And here’s Andy Hunter’s from Anfield, with which I sign out. Bye!
When Liverpool fans next congregate at Anfield in two Sundays’ time it should be for an occasion they have craved for 35 years: to celebrate a league title triumph in person. A dramatic late victory over West Ham, secured by Virgil van Dijk’s 89th minute winner, left Arne Slot’s side needing a maximum of six points to claim a record-equalling 20th league championship.
The destiny of the Premier League title will be confirmed next Sunday should Arsenal lose at Ipswich and Liverpool win at Leicester. If not, two more wins will make sure for the Anfield club. Leicester and Tottenham come next. They can feel it. Liverpool were second best for much of the second half against Graham Potter’s visitors and indebted to goalkeeper Alisson for delaying an equaliser until a Van Dijk error forced Andy Robertson to concede an own goal in the 86th minute. But the Liverpool captain atoned in style and celebrated a precious winner by kissing the Liver bird on his chest. A new two-year contract to follow that of Mohamed Salah should be confirmed soon.
Much more here:
Here’s Ben Fisher’s match report from Molineux, where it sounds like Spurs managed to embarrass themselves again:
As Tottenham’s preparation for, by some distance, the biggest game of their season goes, this was an ominous if not pathetic performance. If it did not already for Ange Postecoglou, it increasingly feels like win or bust in the Europa League. After this defeat, a sixth in seven matches on the road, it is plausible to think Spurs could finish as low as 17th in the Premier League.
Spurs did not recover from conceding after just 85 seconds and a comical own goal by Djed Spence and a Jørgen Strand Larsen tap-in, after an error by their captain, Cristian Romero, were in keeping with a dreadful display.
Much more here:
Virgil van Dijk has a chat. He admits that before West Ham’s goal “I heard him shout” but “these things unfortunately happen”. “There was time to make it right and luckily we did. On to the next.” He’s asked if he’s about to sign a contract extension, and says:
I can tell you I’m very proud today to captain my 100th game for Liverpool. And it was an emotional day, because of the Hillsborough anniversary. The main focus was to get three points, and get a little closer to all of our dreams. Everyone knows how much I love this club, and let’s see what next week will look like.
Mo Salah is indeed the man of the match. This is (some of) what he’s got to say:
West Ham are a good team, they have a good plan, they played better in the second half. They managed to score, and in those circumstances the most important thing was to win the game. Thankfully we did that.
The league table now looks like this. West Ham drop down to 17th on goal difference, thanks to Wolves’ win over Spurs:
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 32 | 43 | 76 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 32 | 30 | 63 |
| 3 | Nottm Forest | 32 | 13 | 57 |
| 4 | Man City | 32 | 20 | 55 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 32 | 17 | 54 |
| 6 | Aston Villa | 32 | 3 | 54 |
| 7 | Newcastle | 30 | 13 | 53 |
| 8 | Fulham | 31 | 5 | 48 |
| 9 | Brighton | 32 | 2 | 48 |
| 10 | AFC Bournemouth | 31 | 11 | 45 |
| 11 | Brentford | 32 | 4 | 43 |
| 12 | Crystal Palace | 31 | 1 | 43 |
| 13 | Man Utd | 31 | -4 | 38 |
| 14 | Everton | 32 | -4 | 38 |
| 15 | Tottenham Hotspur | 32 | 11 | 37 |
| 16 | Wolverhampton | 32 | -14 | 35 |
| 17 | West Ham | 32 | -18 | 35 |
| 18 | Ipswich | 32 | -34 | 21 |
| 19 | Leicester | 32 | -45 | 18 |
| 20 | Southampton | 32 | -54 | 10 |
Final scores in the other 2pm kick-offs: Chelsea 2-2 Ipswich, Wolves 4-2 Tottenham.
Final score: Liverpool 2-1 West Ham
90+8 mins: And that’s it! A lucky, lucky escape for Liverpool, who had about three good minutes in the second half. Those three minutes were, luckily, enough to break West Ham and score what turned out to be the winner.
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90+7 mins: Konate’s limp, tired clearance presents the ball to Kudus, but his cross is straight to Alisson. The crowd cheer his catch like a goal.
90+6 mins: Soufal is booked for dissent. Some more seconds tick by. A minute or so now between Liverpool and a third of the points they currently require.
90+4 mins: West Ham hit the bar now! Kilman crosses, and Fullkrug stoops to send in a very nicely-judged header that hits the bar and rebounds to safety! “If Liverpool do indeed win this despite their second half performance, they will deserve to end up as champions,” writes John Swan. “It’s a well-worn trope that top teams find ways to win despite everything, and Liverpool have had that in spades this season, whereas my team, Arsenal, haven’t (as yesterday’s result showed again). But what is it? Part luck maybe, but mainly I guess bloody-mindedness mixed with enough residual organisation to stumble over the line when the fluency has gone.”
90+1 mins: There will be seven minutes of stoppage time, or thereabouts.
90 mins: All of that came from Paqueta diving, out on the Liverpool right, in search of a cheap free kick as Mac Allister gently pressured him. From there a shot, a save, a corner, a header, a goal.
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GOAL! Liverpool 2-1 West Ham (Van Dijk, 89 mins)
They’ve got their lead back! Mac Allister takes the corner, and Van Dijk rises above Fullkrug and heads in!
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89 mins: Now Quansah’s header from Luis Diaz’s cross is blocked, and moments later Mac Allister’s low cross/shot is turned round the post for a corner.
88 mins: Liverpool hit the bar! They work the ball across the area from left to right, and Luis Diaz’s shot takes a slight deflection, clips the top of the bar, and goes over.
GOAL! Liverpool 1-1 West Ham (Robertson own goal, 86 mins)
West Ham deserve to be level, and now they are! Liverpool have literally given their lead away, Wan-Bissaka’s left-foot cross falls just between Van Dijk and Roberton; Van Dijk half-volleys it into Robertson’s shins, and it rebounds into the corner of the net!
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85 mins: As the Egyptian goes off Jamie Carragher says that if the scoreline remains unchanged Salah, a man who has touched the ball four times in the second half, will be his man of the match. His assist, to be fair, was lovely.
84 mins: A final substitution for Liverpool sees Salah go off, and Wataru Endu come on.
82 mins: Robertson is fouled by Van Dijk as both go for a high ball, and the referee charitably awards a free kick.
81 mins: This really is extraordinary. Liverpool have lost all cohesion. They’re giving the ball away, hitting blind passes into empty areas, being overrun in midfield.
78 mins: The visitors win a corner. Before they take it Soler and Todibo go off, and Fullkrug and Guilherme come on.
77 mins: West Ham are dominating now. Paqueta has been excellent, and Wan-Bissaka’s switch to the left has locked down that side.
75 mins: Salah has, Sky say, touched the ball four times this half. He has, however, just won a corner.
71 mins: Wan-Bissaka prods the ball through Konate’s legs to Kudus, whose low shot from an unpromising angle to the left of goal was well saved, and the loose ball not turned in.
69 mins: Liverpool have been poor this half, verging on the rubbish. Salah in particular has hardly been involved at all.
68 mins: Liverpool take off Jones and Bradley and bring on Szoboszlai and Quansah.
67 mins: Another West Ham chance! Bowen is played through, surely just offside, and Alisson’s first run off his line seems to take him out of position, but he corrects himself by the time Bowen looks up, and couldn’t have been in a better place to get in the way of the eventual shot.
63 mins: In tactical tweak news, Wan-Bissaka is now playing on the left against Salah, and Luis Diaz is at centre-forward with Gakpo on the left.
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62 mins: Another West Ham chance! Paqueta lifts a pass towards Bowen; Van Dijk gets a foot to the ball and diverts Bowen towards the byline, from where he cuts the ball back to Soler, who biffs over the bar.
59 mins: Two substitutions for Liverpool, with Jota and Tsimikas going off and Cody Gakpo and Andy Robertson replacing them.
57 mins: Vladimir Coufal comes on for Scarles, who Salah toyed with pretty mercilessly in the first half.
56 mins: From the corner there’s a handball shout, as the ball drops over a cluster of players into Ward-Prowse’s outstretched arm. It’s certainly not deliberate, but his arm wasn’t in a natural position. It’s not given, and VAR doesn’t intervene.
54 mins: Save! Mac Allister’s corner is half-cleared and worked back to him. He tries another cross but it drifts and spins towards the goal, and would have dropped in had Areola not pushed it over the bar.
52 mins: Paqueta finds a pass through to Bowen, but Van Dijk closes him down before he can shoot, and anyway he was offside. A second goal here might let Liverpool relax and have some fun, but without one their lead is very precarious.
49 mins: Todibo gets stuck with the ball on the right-hand side of West Ham’s defence, but Jota won’t give him enough time to look up let alone make a pass, and eventually he runs it into touch.
47 mins: Mac Allister hits the bar! The free-kick dips towards the near post, but doesn’t quite get down in time.
46 mins: Tsimikas goes down just outside the left-hand corner of the area after Todibo probably just about clipped an ankle.
46 mins: Peeeeeeep!
The players are back out! Half-time scores in the other Premier League games, by the way: Chelsea 0-2 Ipswich, Wolves 2-0 Tottenham. Not a good day for Londoners (so far).
A dominant half from Liverpool, with Salah’s treatment of Oliver Scarles at times verging on cruelty, but for all that West Ham have made two of the three best chances.
Half time: Liverpool 1-0 West Ham
45+2 mins: And as soon as Alisson takes the goal kick, the whistle goes for half time. Of the one minute of stoppage time signalled, the ball was in play for no more than three seconds.
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45+1 mins: Chance for West Ham! Ward-Prowse takes a corner and Mavropanos runs in from deep to win a free header six yards out, but it goes high!
42 mins: Kudus has the ball 25 yards out and thinks he might as well have a shot. It’s not a terrible effort, but it’s both high and wide.
39 mins: Bowen’s low cross from the left runs to Kudus, who has only Alisson to beat from eight yards out. But he can’t beat him, and anyway he’s offside.
37 mins: From a scrum of players just inside the West Ham area Salah emerges, ball at his feet. He goes down, Areola gets to the ball, the referee waves play on.
35 mins: Elsewhere in the Premier League currently: Chelsea 0-2 Ipswich; Wolves 1-0 Tottenham.
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34 mins: Todibo just reaches a cross before Jota, and after Tsimikas collects the loose ball Kilman just reaches the cross before Luis Diaz.
33 mins: Chance for Mac Allister! Salah chips the ball in from the right, Mac Allister volleys goalwards from wide of the near post, but Areola’s in the way!
32 mins: Another excellent long pass to Salah – from Van Dijk this time – and he gets to the edge of the area before waiting for ages for the right person to make the right run before, when Curtis Jones finally volunteers, mishitting his pass.
29 mins: This is as one-sided as a game that could very easily be 1-1 can get. The ball now nearly drops for Mac Allister in the area, two or three times, but never quite manages it. “In the space of just a few seconds, Mo Salah has demonstrated yet again why he is fundamental to Liverpool’s fortunes and deserved to have his contract renewed,” says Colum Fordham. “His stop, dribble and shot (near miss) and the beautiful feint to get away from his marker and the delightful cross with the outside of his left foot to make the goal. Simply sublime.”
27 mins: Before that shot, a beautiful turn to the right from Gravenberch, as a poor West Ham player screams in from behind anticipating a feint to the left and just keeps on running into irrelevance.
26 mins: Jones crosses towards Salah, but it’s a bit too high and he has to back-pedal away from goal and even then can’t control his header.
24 mins: Another high pass towards Salah. This time Scarles goes flying in in an attempt to intercept it, misses, and Salah’s running off into space again. This time he overhits a cross.
22 mins: Wan-Bissaka plays in Calos Soler, but Alisson comes out quickly to block the shot. From the rebound, though, Kudus chips towards the back post, Alisson maybe gets the finest fingertip of a desperately flailing hand to it, but the ball drops onto the bar.
21 mins: A chance for West Ham! And then Kudus hits the bar! “Even if the Liverpool dressing room is currently filled with the aftermath waft of a Scottish fish supper and deep-fried Mars bar, fear not,” writes Justin Kavanagh, “it’ll soon hum with the sweet smell of success.”
GOAL! Liverpool 1-0 West Ham (Luis Diaz, 18 mins)
A similar attack, but a much better outcome! From Konate’s long pass Salah spins away from Oliver Scarles, runs into space on the right and then spears in one of those outside-of-the-left-foot passes he is so ludicrously good at. Luis Diaz, running in from the left, turns it in!
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17 mins: Close! Konate lifts the ball over the entire West Ham team to Salah, whose first touch is majestic and from there he inevitably cuts inside and tries to curl a shot towards the far post. It goes just wide.
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15 mins: Close! Bradley’s shot from just outside the area flies just wide, presumably deflecting off someone along the way as Liverpool win a corner. They play it short, pass it across the box, and eventually Curtis Jones sends in a 30-yard left-foot shot, not a bad effort with the swinger, straight at Areola.
13 mins: Paqueta slips and clatters into the referee, knocking him over like a skittle. Fortunately for him Andrew Madley chooses not to PaulAlcock the situation.
11 mins: Liverpool pass the ball around their defence for a while, waiting for West Ham to offer them a route into midfield. They refrain from doing so, and eventually a long pass towards Salah is intercepted.
8 mins: The ball is played down the Liverpool right this time, but Salah can’t outpace Max Kilman, who prods it out for a corner, which is cleared.
7 mins: Now Luis Diaz curls in a cross but it’s too low, and Mac Allister has little to no hope of improvising a dangerous header from it. Everything happening through Liverpool’s No7.
6 mins: A bright first few minutes for the home side. Luis Diaz runs down the left again, and this time he cuts inside Wan-Bissaka and sends in a shot, which Areola saves.
4 mins: Good work from Todibo to hold up Luis Diaz on the Liverpool left, and then to toe-poke the ball away from Jota as it ran towards him in the area.
3 mins: The home fans sing Mo Salah’s name. He’s done little of interest so far, but he’s signed a new contract and everyone’s happy about it.
1 min: Peeeeeep! After an immaculately observed silence we finally get under way, West Ham doing the honours.
Before the game, a minute’s silence in memory of the 97 victims of the Hillsborough Disaster, which happened 36 years ago on Tuesday.
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Out come the players! West Ham eschewing the long-sleeved anthemwear that so many teams, including Liverpool, puzzlingly consider de rigeur.
A reader, whose name I can’t discern from their email address so must remain anonymous, reckons they’ve worked out why Liverpool’s players were all out in the corridor: “Robertson let one go in the dressing room; he’s famous for it, and it’s one aspect of his game that hasn’t slipped this year.”
Graham Potter has a chat about what kind of impact he’s had on West Ham:
We’ve stabilised the team. Defensively we were conceding a lost so we’ve made improvements there. We’ve been competitive in all the games, I would say. A couple of bad halves but generally, without being fantastic, we’ve been in games. We need to be better today, because we’re playing against the best team.
In my naivety I really don’t understand how the home team, who have a lovely, private dressing-room to chill out in right there, ends up hanging around in a semi-glorified corridor before they go out and warm up. Nice photo, though.
The teams!
Team news is in, and here are the names in the frame this afternoon:
Liverpool: Alisson, Bradley, Konate, van Dijk, Tsimikas, Gravenberch, Mac Allister, Salah, Jones, Diaz, Jota. Subs: Jaros, Kelleher, Endo, Szoboszlai, Chiesa, Gakpo, Elliott,
Robertson, Quansah.
West Ham: Areola, Todibo, Mavropanos, Kilman, Wan-Bissaka, Soler, Ward-Prowse, Scarles, Kudus, Lucas Paqueta, Bowen. Subs: Fabianski, Coufal, Fullkrug, Luis Guilherme, Alvarez, Rodriguez, Soucek, Emerson Palmieri, Ferguson.
Referee: Andrew Madley.
Hello world!
Three more wins. That is, at most, what Liverpool need to win the league. There are no other games, no cups, no European trips, no internationals, no distractions and no congestion – nine of their last 10 games in all competitions are being played on Sundays, including all of the remaining seven. West Ham’s away record is (very, very marginally) better than their home record (1.125 points per game at home, 1.133 away) but neither is very good and they haven’t been able to sustain an average of more than a point a game for a while: they’ve got two points in their last four, eight in their last eight, 12 in their last 12. In short, they look very unlikely to do anything to derail Liverpool’s title bid. In fact, they haven’t looked as unlikely to win a game since they traipsed miserably to Arsenal in February having won one point in their last four games. Inevitably, football being football, they won.
Here’s Andy Hunter’s mini preview:
It is not a question of who will win the Premier League title but how it will be won: at a canter or with Liverpool testing the anxiety levels of their supporters once again? The answer should become clearer after West Ham’s visit. A catalogue of individual errors resulted in the end of Liverpool’s 26-game unbeaten league run at Fulham last weekend and left Arne Slot’s team still needing 11 points to secure the club’s 20th league championship, although the total will be fewer should Arsenal drop any more points. West Ham, Leicester and Tottenham, Liverpool’s next three opponents, present the more straightforward route to victory than trying to get over the line against Chelsea, Arsenal, Brighton and Crystal Palace in the final four games of the season. Anfield could be an apprehensive place on Sunday and will be looking to the team’s experienced leaders to get the job almost done.
