Salah stars as Liverpool beat West Ham to move eight points clear at the top of the table | Premier League

After 54 minutes at the London Stadium, Trent Alexander-Arnold took a pass from Ryan Gravenberch with time to wait and see. The West Ham players’ lack of pressure almost seemed like a public snub before he buried a deflected shot past Alphonse Areola. It’s 4-0 to Liverpool, once again ending a game that was long dead.

Alexander-Arnold provided at least a moment of cartoon drama by silencing a slightly embarrassed celebration with his hand raised to his ear. Perhaps this was a reference to stories of a move to Real Madrid which, according to parts of the Spanish media, have all but been formalised.

At least it was a hint of rare interest in the second half on a night when Liverpool were 5-0 up, with Diogo Jota scoring late on after the entire West Ham defense and midfield were watching closely as Mohamed Salah made some dribbles.

The result means Liverpool will move to the top of the Premier League table in 2025 by at least seven points and at least a game ahead of their peers. Arne Slot’s team was once again coherent, energetic and well balanced, and the resurgent top three shared the goals. The weather can change, teams can stumble, force majeure can intervene. The rest of the league will need the help of all three to prevent the five months from becoming a drawn-out process.

On the other hand, Liverpool won’t be able to play West Ham every week, which is probably best for everyone involved. It would be wrong to say that West Ham collapsed here in the first half. This would imply some sort of initial resistance. Instead, Julen Lopetegui’s team went prepared and ready to disintegrate like an over-soaked digestive biscuit.

The London Stadium at kick-off had been a damp, gloomy place at the end of the day, surrounded by dying Olympic towers and ancient megaliths that loomed like crashed Imperial command cruisers in the fog of east London.

There was a blurry, hungover start with both teams carefully working through their patterns. With five minutes left, West Ham had their first taste of a break. Bad idea. Almost immediately, Liverpool woke up and should have scored when Cody Gakpo slid inside and fired a lovely diagonal pass to Salah close to goal, but Areola was able to make a lovely diving block.

Things were already looking shockingly easy for Liverpool. Curtis Jones had started in his advanced pass-and-press attacking role, with Gakpo on the left and Luis Díaz moving mischievously from the middle. West Ham could never cope with their movement. It’s not so much a bad West Ham team at the moment as it is a completely disjointed team, a collection of shirts vaguely thrown together as if they were doing laundry on the line.

Liverpool were able to counter-press well in this phase, although it is easier to steal the ball when the opponent appears terrified of finding it at their feet in the first place. Díaz ran inside and saved again as the precarious force field around West Ham’s six-yard area continued to bubble and hiss.

The goal finally came after 29 minutes. Díaz dropped deep and received a short pass from Alexander-Arnold, then tried to pass a sweet little pass to Jones. At this point, West Ham scored the most striking one-touch combination of the half: Konstantinos Mavropanos blocked the ball from Vladimir Coufal, who directed it straight back into the path of Díaz, who continued running and calmly finished.

Joe Gomez had to retire injured and was replaced by Jarell Quansah. Almost immediately, Quansah was a bit slow to stop Mohammed Kudus, who shot low and hard and hit the outside of the post.

Doesn’t matter. Within two minutes it was 2-0. This time there was a counterattack from Díaz, a pass inside to Salah and an improvised turn in which he heeled the ball through Mavropanos’ legs and then darted past to retrieve it while the defender stumbled like a diplodocus, who is threatened by a Velociraptor. The ball was passed to Gakpo, who scored.

Was Salah serious? Probably not quite like that. But he was certainly smart and poised and physically creative enough to make it a nice little tailor-made moment of skill. And before halftime there were three. Of course it was. This time Carlos Soler gave the ball away. Jones passed the ball to Salah and he shot into the corner with embarrassing ease.

This game was practically over at halftime, as seemed inevitable after the first slow exchanges. And so the new age advances without the slightest friction.

Liverpool Football Club has fallen hard for Slot over the last four months. There was something dreamy about this journey from August sunlight to December cold, an unexpected feeling of drowning in honey.

It seems only logical that the world will intervene at some point. You have to look down to feel a slight dizziness. Success always comes with hurdles and difficult moments. For the rest of the field, however, it seems a distant hope. This was sophisticated, ruthless champion form, a victory with reserves of strength.