Liverpool vs West Ham

Liverpool went into this level on points with Chelsea, 45 from 27 played, still with the top four in view and the memory of a first-place finish last season sitting behind everything they do. West Ham arrived 18th, 25 points and minus 17 on goal difference, a side whose last five had brought 2 wins, 2 draws and a defeat, a return with enough substance to suggest something short of crisis but nowhere near enough to lift them out of 18th. 90 minutes later the gap between those two positions had been narrated in full.

Ekitiké opened the scoring in the 5th minute, teed up by Gravenberch, the kind of goal that tells a visiting side exactly how the afternoon is going to feel. Van Dijk made it 2 in the 24th minute, finishing from a Szoboszlai assist, and by the time Mac Allister converted an Ekitiké assist in the 43rd, Liverpool were 3-0 up at the break and West Ham, who had lost at Chelsea and won at Burnley among their recent away business, looked entirely of a piece with what was happening in front of them.

What Liverpool's first half actually did was strip away any argument that West Ham's away struggles were about bad luck rather than substance. 18 shots to 11, 7 on target to 4, 10 corners to 5: these are not marginal advantages, they are a comfortable superiority in the only figures that decide matches. West Ham's 51 per cent possession and their 422 passes to Liverpool's 405 tell a different story on paper, more of the ball, more patience in build-up, and almost nothing to show for it in the only column that matters. A team can pass around a problem all afternoon and still not solve it.

Souček pulled one back 4 minutes into the second half, finishing a move started by Diouf, and for a spell West Ham looked like a side that might make Liverpool sweat for the position they hold. It did not last. Gakpo restored the three-goal margin in the 70th minute, set up by Ekitiké for the second time in the match, and the involvement by then was not incidental: a goal, 2 assists, a hand in 3 of Liverpool's 5, the kind of afternoon that decides a man of the match argument before the whistle has gone. Nobody else on the pitch matched that level of direct contribution to what actually happened, and the case for anyone else collapses the moment you count what Ekitiké touched that ended in the net.

West Ham did not disappear after Gakpo's goal. Castellanos, teed up by Bowen, scored in the 75th minute, and Bowen's afternoon, 1 assist and enough involvement to be marked as his side's best performer, was arguably the only positive West Ham can carry into their next match. He found a teammate when the goal mattered most. Wan-Bissaka, by contrast, was rated the weakest performer of the match.

The substitutions that followed changed little about the shape of the result, though one of them contributed directly to it. Frimpong replaced Gomez in the 77th minute and was on the pitch for only 13 minutes, yet he rated among Liverpool's best in that short window, and it was Frimpong's assist that saw Disasi turn the ball into his own net in the 82nd minute, a fifth Liverpool goal that had nothing flattering to say about West Ham's concentration with the game already gone. Adama Traoré's introduction for West Ham in the 76th minute and the late changes either side, Ngumoha on for Ekitiké, Nyoni on for Gravenberch, Kante and Mayers arriving in the 90th minute, were the natural business of a match that had been decided since the third goal.

What this does for Liverpool is straightforward. 45 points now, level with Chelsea, the top four still very much the argument they are having with themselves, and a defending champion from last season being pushed to prove it belongs there again is a sharper story than a mid-table side simply doing its job. What comes next is not gentle: two fixtures against Wolves inside a week, in the league and the FA Cup, followed by a Champions League trip to Galatasaray, a run that will test whether 5 goals at Anfield travel or stay at home.

For West Ham the diagnosis is less about this single result than about what it confirms. A side 18th in the table, minus 17 on goal difference coming in, conceding 5 at Anfield is not a collapse so much as a pattern completing itself. Their next assignment, away at Fulham, offers little room to recover the ground, before a home FA Cup tie against Brentford and a visit from Manchester City that will ask considerably harder questions than this one did. Nuno Espirito Santo's side showed enough in patches, Souček's goal, Castellanos's finish, Bowen's assist for it, to suggest they are not without craft. What they lack, and what this scoreline exposed without mercy, is the capacity to stop a good side doing exactly what it wants for the first half hour of a match. Liverpool did not need a plan B. West Ham never found a plan A.