At the final whistle, victory secured, Andoni Iraola embraced both his current players and those he guided to new heights at Bournemouth last season. Liverpool are not yet the overwhelming, suffocating force Iraola hopes they become but they did enough to claim three points here, Alexander Isak capping a peculiar performance with a simple finish. Cody Gakpo was again the architect, the Dutchman the supplier for all four of Isak’s goals this season. Isak’s only other shot before scoring was to balloon a first-time effort high and wide but his second-half strike was sufficient to return Liverpool to winning ways in the Premier League.
In midweek, Iraola was rooting for his former club on their European bow but promised a businesslike return to Bournemouth and stepped off one of the two Liverpool team coaches with a game face. Tommy Elphick, who captained Bournemouth to the Premier League in 2015 and followed Iraola to Liverpool, embraced old colleagues on the pitch side before the warm up and Dominik Szoboszlai and Milos Kerkez shared an embrace with Alex Toth, their Hungary teammate. Kerkez replaced Kostas Tsimikas at left-back in one of three changes from their stalemate with Fulham.
