Isak applies finishing touch as Liverpool bring Brighton’s winning run to an end
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Brighton’s emphatic run was blown off course at Anfield as Liverpool moved up to fourth with an appetite and urgency at both ends of the pitch that showed Andoni Iraola’s methods taking root. It is Liverpool, convincing winners on home soil for the first time this season in the Premier League, who looked upwardly mobile.Florian Wirtz was instrumental in an opening goal officially credited to Brighton’s Pascal Gross and Alexander Isak converted his sixth league goal of the campaign to shatter the visitors’ sequence of four successive Premier League wins.
The home side’s superior first half performance was another demonstration of the expensive trio of Wirtz, Isak and Barcola feeling increasingly at home under Iraola.Liverpool were aggressive and sharp from the start, in contrast to their opening against Villarreal in the Champions League on Tuesday, and opened the scoring just as Brighton were beginning to exert their first serious spell of pressure.There was an element of good fortune about the breakthrough but it also encapsulated the differing intensity between the teams when Wirtz held off Lewis Dunk and Araújo beat both the Brighton captain and Oliver Boscagli to the loose ball. The breakthrough was officially credited as an own goal from the Brighton midfielder.It should also have been a Liverpool equaliser rather than the opener as Yasin Ayari had a glorious chance to give Brighton the lead moments earlier.
It was Liverpool’s first goal in the first half of a Premier League game at Anfield this season. The visitors’ best hope of a recovery stemmed from the Liverpool keeper’s own risky pass to Alexis Mac Allister, which gifted possession back to Brighton and resulted in Ayari striking a post from 20 yards out.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJack Hinshelwood, Boscagli’s replacement, and fellow substitute Malick Yalcouyé injected more energy and bite into Brighton’s second half display but an end product from the visitors remained lacking.