How the national media reacted to Liverpool's 2-0 win at West Ham United in the Premier League on Sunday afternoon
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot looks on prior to kick-off during the Premier League match at West Ham United on November 30 2025
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot looks on prior to kick-off during the Premier League match at West Ham United on November 30 2025
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Time for a lie down. Liverpool ended a run of three successive defeats with a deserved 2-0 Premier League victory at lowly West Ham United on Sunday afternoon.
Alexander Isak's first top-flight goal since his £125million arrival from Newcastle United put the Reds ahead on the hour before Cody Gakpo made the game safe during additional time.
It ensured Liverpool moved back up into the top half of the table. And while the ECHO was in attendance and provided our usual level of coverage, here's how the national media viewed a positive result for Arne Slot's side.
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Ian Ladyman of the Daily Mail praised the decision-making of Slot under the ongoing pressure.
"Arne Slot walked slowly towards the Liverpool supporters, acknowledged them with a wave and a thumbs up and then folded his blue mac over his left arm and strode down the tunnel," he pens. "We have seen the ritual many times before. Slot is an understated man, when things are good and also – we are learning – when things are not so good.
"That has been the Liverpool manager’s way as the pressure has grown over the last two or three weeks and that was his way once a big victory had been assured here in east London.
"Calm in the storm and all that. And though it has not passed yet – games against Sunderland and then at Leeds make up an upcoming testing week – here he was rewarded for not only managing to retain some kind of perspective within the madness but also for some brave and thoroughly sensible decisions ahead of this game.
"No Mo Salah here against West Ham. And opportunities again for Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz. Big choices, all. Big choices that came off."
Writing in The Times, Alysson Rudd highlighted the decision to drop Mohamed Salah to the bench.
"Perhaps a dull 2-0 victory is just what Arne Slot’s side needed to galvanise a campaign that had threatened to implode," he says. "There was little in the way of majesty but a first Liverpool Premier League goal for Alexander Isak and a Cody Gakpo injury-time strike was enough to stop the rot.
"Goodness knows what ire would have been directed at Slot had Liverpool’s crisis deepened because in dropping Mohamed Salah he was taking a risk. If it had backfired it might have seemed he was running out of options because it is quite simply a shock whenever the Egyptian starts on the bench."
Jonathan Wilson of The Guardian assessed the line-up changes that offered an opportunity to Liverpool's £116m summer signing.
"That meant Florian Wirtz as the central creator, the role he was signed to play," he scribes. "The suggestion all season has been that this is the shape Slot wants for Liverpool; it was the shape he used in winning the Eredivisie with Feyenoord, and the summer signings make more sense in the context of a transition away from 4-3-3.
"But a 4-2-3-1 with a non-defender such as Salah was always a risk. That perhaps has been the biggest tactical issue for Liverpool this season: it was a post-Salah team with Salah still in it.
"Wirtz is yet to score or register an assist in the Premier League since his £100m+ move from Bayer Leverkusen but, not for the first time this season, he looked industrious and tidy without that translating into a huge amount of threat. His tendency to drift to the left means that there are some glimmers of a partnership building with Gakpo, but as yet he and Isak are not on the same wavelength."
Sam Dean of The Telegraph believes Liverpool have offered a hint of what their future could be like after Salah.
"Was this the first proper glimpse of Liverpool 2.0?" he ponders. "The first sign that Arne Slot’s costly evolution is, at last, beginning to take shape? It certainly felt that way as Slot dropped Mohamed Salah to his bench and instead successfully built his team’s attack around the £240m duo of Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz.
"With Salah watching from the dugout for the first time in a league game since Jurgen Klopp was Liverpool’s manager, the new boys finally delivered the sort of performances they were signed for. Isak struck his first league goal for Liverpool with a wonderfully sharp finish, while the much-criticised Wirtz was the game’s standout player."
Finally, the tall Paul Gorst picked up on the same theme when writing in the ECHO.
"It may not stave off the wider debates around his suitability for the job he occupies just yet but, as Steven Gerrard had urged after Wednesday's 4-1 smiting by PSV in the Champions League, the Reds have at least stopped the bleeding. For now.
"The challenge for the champions now is to continue putting their best foot forward and get beyond the upcoming festive period with a historically poor run of nine defeats in the previous 12 firmly behind them.
"And this deserved victory provided a brief glimpse into the future at Anfield; to a world where Florian Wirtz loads the bullets and Alexander Isak fires the gun. After nearly three months as Liverpool team-mates, supporters finally got to see a snapshot of what they are both capable of in the same team."