It had been a strange sort of wait. Not a crisis exactly, and not accompanied by the sort of panic that usually follows a winless run at a club with Liverpool’s history, but a wait all the same. Sunday afternoon ended it, as Andoni Iraola’s side beat Brighton 2-0 to record their first home league victory of the season, a result that mattered rather more than two goals in the opening twenty minutes might suggest.
Pascal Gross put the ball into his own net in the 17th minute, turning Florian Wirtz’s low shot past his own goalkeeper after Ronald Araujo’s cross had been half cleared into his path. Four minutes later, Alexander Isak made it two, finishing from close range after Bradley Barcola had raced onto a loose ball and delivered the sort of cutback that strikers dream about. Brighton huffed and puffed for the rest of the afternoon without ever truly threatening to get back into it, and Liverpool held on for a win that ended a run of five home league matches without three points.
A strange sort of victory
What made it stranger still were the numbers. Liverpool had just 35.6% of the ball, by some distance their lowest share of possession in a home Premier League win in well over two decades. Brighton, by contrast, enjoyed almost two thirds of it and racked up 17 shots to Liverpool’s far fewer. Yet only one of those 17 found the target. Yasin Ayari missed the sort of chance strikers are paid to score early on, then hit the post with a bending effort in the 36th minute, and that was about as close as Fabian Hurzeler’s side came to making the afternoon competitive again.
It summed up a Liverpool performance built on moments rather than sustained control. Iraola made four changes from the side that had come from two goals down to beat Villarreal in midweek, bringing back Isak, Wirtz, Milos Kerkez and Barcola, and while the collective shape was not always convincing, the two players at the sharp end did exactly what was needed. Cody Gakpo also had an early sight of goal, curling an effort straight at Bart Verbruggen, before Liverpool’s breakthrough arrived through that slightly fortunate own goal.
Wirtz limped off with an ankle knock just past the hour mark, replaced by teenager Trey Nyoni, who promptly produced a last ditch challenge to deny Maxim De Cuyper when Brighton threatened a way back in. Brighton’s afternoon had already been complicated by an early blow of their own: Ferdi Kadioglu went off with what looked like a hip problem inside the first ten minutes, forcing an unwanted reshuffle before the game had really settled.
Isak’s quiet habit of finding the net
The more significant story, in the longer run, is what Isak is doing with the chances that come his way. His goal against Brighton was his sixth in the Premier League this season and his third league match in succession with his name on the scoresheet, a run that, according to Opta’s data, is his best since a run of eight consecutive matches back in January 2025. For a player signed from Newcastle for a fee in the region of £125 million, that sort of consistency is precisely what was asked of him, and precisely what Liverpool have not always been able to count on from their forward line in recent months.
It helps, too, that others around him are contributing to the service rather than needing to be served themselves. Barcola’s burst to reach Olivier Boscagli’s blocked clearance, and the composure to find Isak rather than shoot himself, was the sort of selfless, game reading contribution that often gets overlooked next to the finish it created. Wirtz, for all that his own afternoon petered out early through injury, was involved in the move that led to the opening goal even if the own goal column will not record it that way.
Iraola, speaking afterwards, kept his assessment simple. “We needed this win at home and to celebrate with the supporters,” he said, adding that he had liked the collective spirit his side showed even when the ball was not behaving the way they wanted it to. It was the sort of understated reaction that suggested a manager more relieved than triumphant, aware that a run of five winless home league games, whatever the underlying performances, was becoming a theme worth ending rather than explaining away.
What it means from here
The result lifts Liverpool to fourth in the table on 15 points from eight games, a single point behind Brighton and four behind the joint leaders, Arsenal and Manchester City, who sit level on 21 points apiece after their own weekend results. It is Liverpool’s fourth consecutive win in all competitions, a run that began with that dramatic recovery against Villarreal in Europe, and the sort of momentum a side with genuine title ambitions needs to start building regardless of how it is achieved.
For Brighton, it was only their second defeat of the season and their first since the end of August, a reminder that even the division’s form team eventually runs into an afternoon where the final pass or the final touch will not go their way. Hurzeler did not try to dress it up afterwards, calling it “a missed opportunity” and making clear his frustration was with his own side’s mistakes rather than anything Liverpool did particularly well, pointing to two needless errors that handed Liverpool their goals. It was a fair assessment given how little else Liverpool created in open play.
Both sides now turn to the Carabao Cup in midweek, Liverpool at home to Chelsea and Brighton away at Manchester City, before Liverpool host Arsenal next Sunday in a match that already looks like a serious examination of how real their recent momentum is. Brighton, meanwhile, travel to the Etihad in the league three days after that, a stern enough task to find out whether Sunday’s wobble was a one off or the first sign that the pace they have set all season was always going to be hard to sustain.
None of it changes what mattered most on Sunday. A difficult run at home is over, a big money forward is finding exactly the sort of form his price tag demanded, and a manager still finding his feet in a new job got the afternoon, and the reaction from his own supporters, that he had been waiting for.
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