Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 2 West Ham United 1 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
ALL season, the line has been they have got what they deserve.
And in a way, today, they did. They deserved to score two goals first half. They deserved to be pinned back second half, and then in the five minutes that followed the equaliser they deserved to score.
But good God, were they poor second half until they concede. I have no real idea why. Did West Ham raise it? Did Liverpool try and blow it? Was the shape wrong? Was something nullified? Was something off?
Genuinely poor. And then genuinely incredible, overwhelming and then a captain with his people. The captain. The man who has filled some of the void the previous manager left, while hitting a peak of performance rarely seen at the highest level of football.
The captain has us on the brink. His brink and ours. His stadium and ours. Anfield is Virgil van Dijk’s in a way it has rarely belonged to one man.
Two more, then. That’s what this takes. Two fistfuls. Four halves of football. We are past just believing now and into the hardest mile home. If you want to see the captain lift the trophy in person, we have to carry these boys home. If you want that day to come, they need us to be loud and raucous.
The intent occasionally leaves them and we need to insist. We need to tell them they don’t need to worry. They are the ones to win the most successful club in the land’s 20th title. They are the ones.
They don’t need to carry this delicate vase over the line. They should be bulls in all the china shops you have going.
Liverpool bring the intent in the first half. They break out on the whistle and look determined to score. The manager is playing a changing, emerging but strong team. Changed wings with Kostas Tsimikas and Conor Bradley mean fewer crossfield passes, but the ball is nonetheless floated through midfield showing something of the future perhaps.
Luis Diaz, yet again, is an absolute maker of trouble. West Ham are determined to put a stop to our party. But with the man from Barrancas, they have absolutely no chance. We dominate possession in the first half. Mac Allister and Gravenberch provide for a feisty and speedy midfield. Despite Mac Allister being a target for West Ham (why do all teams love to foul him so?), the east Londoners are clearly finding the pressure hard.
Salah is the icing on the cake. He is the cream of the crop. He is setting up chances like nobody’s business and all and sundry are trying to pop them in past Areola. It’s elegantly done on the 18th minute by Diaz.
You feel Liverpool in the first half could score three. They are straightforwardly all over West Ham. Attempts on goal are plentiful and it feels like it will come. Curtis Jones is robust and West Ham have little to say or do in reply.
But as the second half opens, West Ham seem brighter and Wan Bissaka all the more ruthless. He charges between hassling Mo Salah and bothering Conor Bradley. He has every appearance of a man who has played at Anfield any number of times before and has told his dressing room not to be bothered by it. West Ham realise that the best way to stop us scoring is to stop Liverpool holding the ball for any period.
All of a sudden, possession stats reverse, and West Ham decide to play. Play against The Reds, and play against Anfield. They really don’t have much, but The Reds become disorganised as Konate and Jones make a couple of mistakes, and all of a sudden the domination of this game looks like it has switched. Lucas Paqueta is yet again magnificent at Anfield.
These are 17th. Seventeenth! That Liverpool will win this league is because they will have done better at dealing with the challenge of the sheer quality so many sides possess. West Ham won at Arsenal. Deservedly.
We are all desperate for a Liverpool second goal. The manager brings on Cody Gakpo (okay) and Andy Robertson (is Kostas Tsimikas tired?) on 60. It’s a slightly odd substitution, but you can see how it would have seemed rational if we were 2-0 up. But we aren’t. And Gakpo doesn’t seem to aid the possession problems.
As if to roll the dice once more, he subs Jones for Quansah and Szoboszlai for Bradley eight minutes later.
If anything, the possession problems worsen slightly, added to by the confusion of five subs in 20 minutes. Szoboszlai and Mac Allister gesture to the bench and then each other as if the formation message has been lost in translation. Confusion reigns as madness in the box sees a bundle of Liverpool players fail to clear a ball and Andy Robertson force it into our own net. Madness.
Anfield erupts. Not now. Not today. Not this way. We scream and scream. Come on, Red Men. Come on. We are doing this. We are.
Corner.
Van Dijk.
Shove.
Head.
Bang.
Done.
Anfield erupts. Anfield screams. Anfield has its number added to by its captain. The man who owns the gaff. The man we would follow into the very jaws of hell. The man I want to take out tonight. Because this:
We. Are. Going. To. Win. The. League.
Now you are going to believe us.
West Ham fans dribble some chant about sign on, sign on. Most people can’t hear them. No one cares. They are done.
The league is everything but done.
Scream it home, Reds. Scream it home. And revel in it.
God has given us these days of leisure.
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