- 3 hours ago
Mohamed Salah is an all-timer: Winners and Losers from Liverpool 5-0 West Ham
Liverpool have absolutely walloped West Ham 5-0 at The London Stadium.
The win extends Liverpool's lead atop the Premier League to seven points ahead of second-place Nottingham Forest.
Title rivals Arsenal and Chelsea are nine and ten points behind the Reds, respectively, while defending champions Man City are a huge 14 points adrift.
Here are the winners and losers from the massive result
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Winner: Mohamed Salah
Mohamed Salah was the defining force of the win over West Ham, as he so often is. So perhaps in many ways it's not remarkable.
But it cannot go without comment.
Of Liverpool's five goals, three were absolutely covered in Mohamed Salah's fingerprints. And what's funny is his actual goal was by far his least impressive action in the game. In fact he was lucky it even went in, as it was a poor finish in line with much of his shooting in the game as he missed several chances.
But the true mark of genius is being able to perform even when things aren't going your way, and Salah still ran the show with two delirious assists.
First gave us a barely believeable touch in the box to nutmeg Kostas Mavropanos and then, with his very next touch he nutmegged another defender to squeeze the ball through to Cody Gakpo who scored.
He even had the humility to admit that the first nutmeg was an accident: "I don't think the first one, but the second one yes," he said to Sky Sports.
In the second-half he went on a mazy, jinky run through the heart of the West Ham defence. He weaved this way and that, sending defenders swerving and slipping like toddlers wearing ice skates, before popping a pass through for Diogo Jota to score. Absolutely bananas.
Salah is currently averaging a goal or assist every 50 minutes in the Premier League. 50 minutes! That is just outrageous.
Salah has scored and assisted in a single game 8 times already this season, which is an all-time record in the history of the Premier League.
There were debates before, but this is the season where Mohamed Salah confirms his status as a Premier League all-time great.
Top 5 Dead or Alive.
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Loser: The Christmas Picture Curse
Mohamed Salah is playing so well that not even his own Christmas Picture Curse can stop him.
In season's past he would post a heartwarming Christmas picture with his family and a great big tree, and coincidentally his form would also drop off after he posted the picture and social media took it as a "curse."
So when he posted the 2024 picture, opposing fans rejoiced. Except Salah is in such an absurd vein of form that he's simply powered through.
— Mohamed Salah (@MoSalah) December 25, 2024
2 goals and 2 assists in 2 games since Christmas.
Cursed no longer!
Winner: Luis Diaz
While Mohamed Salah did dominate the match, his erratic finishing meant that the game was approaching the half-hour mark with no goals scored.
Then Luis Diaz produced a goal that was a product of his own hard work. The Colombian drove through the heart of West Ham, got a lucky bounce, then finished emphatically to give Liverpool the lead and set the stage for Salah.
That gives Diaz three goals in his last three games and, with 8 goals, he's already matched his league goal tally from last season. He has 12 across all competitions which is just four away from his career-high of 16 goals.
Loser: Alphonse Areola
When you concede 5 goals, maybe it's obvious you're a loser. But Alphonse Areola isn't a loser for losing, or even for conceding 5 goals, at least not directly.
He's a loser because in his first Premier League start in months, he actually played superbly! The Frenchman made countless big saves, especially early on, to keep Liverpool out.
And although the Reds did stick five past him, only one of those (Salah's strike) was even close to being his fault. He had no chance with the other four.
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Winner: Arne Slot
What a year it's been for Arne Slot!
The Dutch coach started it at Feyenoord where he powered on to win the Eredivisie, then moved to Liverpool where he made the extremely difficult job of following on from Jurgen Klopp look ridiculously easy.
Slot has lost just once in the league this year, at home to Nottingham Forest, won one league title and is well on his way to go and win another one after his team thrashed West Ham 5-0 with five different goalscorers.
What an incredible year.
Loser: The Premier League
Just when you think Liverpool cannot get any more dominant, they do.
This was a huge L for the chasing pack of clubs, from Arsenal to Chelsea to even, incredibly Nottingham Forest.
They are all normal clubs, subject to the whims of fate where sometimes you just lose games every now and again, or where key players get injured.
Liverpool, meanwhile, just keep on rolling no matter the situation. Even when they get injuries there always seems to be someone ready to step into the breech (as we saw today when Jarrell Quansah replaced the injured Joe Gomez).
Other clubs can dominate games without scoring as Liverpool did in the opening 30 minutes, where shots just refuse to go in for whatever reason. But for other, normal teams that lasts for the whole game. For Liverpool the ball will bounce off one West Ham player into another West Ham player and fall perfectly for Luis Diaz to open the scoring.
They are not like the rest.
They are blessed, and they are better.
