Liverpool’s Anfield Challenge as Isak Shines
Liverpool arrive at Sunday’s meeting with Brighton with a spring in their step and a stone in their shoe. The results are improving, the mood is lighter, the goals are flowing again. Yet the old certainty has gone. Anfield, once the Premier League’s most intimidating stage, no longer guarantees anything.
That is the tension running through this fixture. Momentum versus doubt. A team on the rise against a stadium that has stopped behaving like a fortress.
Isak sharpens Liverpool’s edge
The good news for Liverpool is simple: Alexander Isak looks razor sharp.
After a brief spell out injured, he walked straight back into the starting XI at Brentford last weekend and immediately tilted the game in Liverpool’s favour. With the hosts down to 10 men, it was Isak who settled it, completing a 2-1 comeback that was messy, awkward and exactly the kind of win title contenders need to grind out.
A few days later, he came off the bench in Europe and looked like he had never been away. Liverpool trailed Villarreal 2-0, then surged back to win 4-3 and preserve a perfect European record this season. It was thrilling, chaotic, and said as much about Liverpool’s attacking verve as their lingering vulnerability. They can score from anywhere. They also keep giving themselves mountains to climb.
Isak, though, feels ready for the climb. Speaking to the club’s website, his assessment of his fitness and form was as direct as his movement in the box: it was only a short layoff, he feels good, and he believes the team is in a good place. The performances support that view more than any soundbite.
So do the numbers. Five goals in six Premier League appearances this season. Four of those strikes have directly decided wins, against Ipswich Town, Bournemouth and Brentford. Stretch the sample and it becomes even clearer: five goals in his last five league matches. When Liverpool need a cutting edge, it is Isak who is providing it.
The problem they cannot shake
And yet, beneath the optimism, the same question keeps resurfacing: what has happened to Liverpool at home?
They are winless in their last five league games at Anfield. For a club with serious ambitions, that is not a blip, it is a leak. Points are slipping away on the very ground where they used to be banked in advance.
You have to go back to two of the more jarring spells of the Premier League era to find anything worse: a seven-game home drought in 2002-03 and the eight-game run in 2020-21, when injuries and empty stands ripped the heart out of Liverpool’s season. This current sequence is not yet as dramatic, but the warning lights are flashing.
Liverpool’s attack, powered by Isak, is doing its part. The issue lies in the balance of performances at Anfield, where control has too often given way to anxiety. Leads feel fragile. Games feel open when they should be closed. The crowd still roars, but the inevitability has gone.
Brighton’s awkward history lesson
Brighton arrive as a useful measuring stick rather than a bogey side. The record at Anfield favours Liverpool heavily: just one home league defeat in the last nine against Brighton, with six wins and two draws. The outlier, a 1-0 loss in February 2021, sits in the middle of that wretched eight-game home run, a reminder of how quickly things can unravel when certainty disappears.
Andoni Iraola’s team, though, come into this with their own sense of recovery. They were taken apart 3-0 by Manchester City, then answered the criticism by grinding out that 2-1 comeback win over Brentford, taking control once the red card swung the balance. They followed it by surviving a wild night against Villarreal, turning 2-0 down into a 4-3 victory to keep their European campaign spotless.
It has not always been convincing. It has been resilient. Brighton know how to live in messy games, and Anfield has hosted more than a few of those lately.
Anfield’s verdict awaits
Strip it back and the picture is clear. Liverpool have the in-form striker. They have the better recent momentum. They have a fixture they usually handle at home.
Now comes the part statistics cannot answer. Does Anfield still work for them in the league, when it really matters, under pressure and expectation?
Brighton will not just test Liverpool’s form. They will test whether the old fear factor on Merseyside is gone for good, or merely waiting to be switched back on.
