Wolves vs Liverpool LIVE: Result and reaction as Salah penalty gives unconvincing Reds win

3 mins

Van Dijk attempts the long ball over the top to Salah, but it runs to Johnstone. Not much action at the start of this one.

1 min

Wolves look to make a quick start and they’re on the attack straight away, but it isn’t troubling the Liverpool defence.

The away side get us underway.

The sides are in the tunnel and we’re approaching kick-off. Liverpool will go top of the league with a win today remember.

Wolves would climb from bottom to 16th with a win.

The home side have lost more Premier League games against Liverpool than they have vs any other opponent – 16.

Wolves have lost 14 of their last 15 against the Reds in the league, with the exception being a 3-0 home win in February 2023.

Gary O’Neil’s side are without a league win so far this season, having drawn one game and lost four. Only in 2003/04 (first seven) and 2019/20 (first six) have they gone longer without a victory from the start of a Premier League campaign.

No Premier League side is on a longer run without a clean sheet than Wolves, who have conceded in each of their last 17 league matches.

Since the start of last season, Matheus Cunha has been involved in more Premier League goals for Wolves than any other player, with 21 – 14 goals and 7 assists.

Liverpool have won five of their last six Premier League games, keeping a clean sheet in each victory. 

In addition, the Reds have kept a clean sheet in 65 per cent of their Premier League games against Wolves.

Arne Slot’s side have conceded the fewest goals of any Premier League side so far this season (just one), while no team has shipped more than Wolves’s 14. 

Trent Alexander-Arnold’s assist against Bournemouth last weekend was his 59th in the Premier League, moving him level with teammate Andrew Robertson for most assists by a defender in the competition’s history.

Luis Díaz has been involved in six goals in his last four Premier League appearances, scoring five and assisting one. He’s scored a brace in two of his last three for the Reds.

Here are the other results from around the Premier League then, as we approach the final match of the day.

Newcastle 1-1 Manchester City

Arsenal 4-2 Leicester City

Chelsea 4-2 Brighton

Brentford 1-1 West Ham

Everton 2-1 Crystal Palace

Nottingham Forest 0-1 Fulham

Liverpool and Wolves have played a total of 116 matches, with the first taking place in September 1894. Liverpool have won 61, with Wolves winning 37 and the other 18 matches ending in draws.

The Reds won both matches last season, winning 3-1 at the Molineux in September 2023 before securing a 2-0 victory at Anfield on the final dauy of the season.

If it seems that Arne Slot is picking on Trent Alexander-Arnold in the Liverpool dressing room, it is not because of a problem between them. Quite the opposite, actually. Because the right-back had an unusual request. He wanted his manager to criticise him, sometimes in front of his teammates. He asked him to mention every time a forward beat him and to brand it unacceptable. It is a punishing approach designed to make him better. He feels that Slot, with his attention to detail and track record of improving players, can help.

There is an understandable focus on their relationship. Alexander-Arnold represented one of the great triumphs of Jurgen Klopp’s management: first his decision not to buy a right-back because he knew of a teenage talent in the ranks, then as an extraordinary creator who reshaped Liverpool’s tactics as the full-backs attacked more than the midfield, and finally as the vice-captain who inverted into midfield.

It did not escape attention that Slot substituted Alexander-Arnold in each of his first three games or that the 25-year-old was unhappy to be taken off against Brentford. It is a cause of some concern that Alexander-Arnold is in the last year of his contract at Anfield. Yet if mentions of his future can involve talk of a free transfer last summer, Alexander-Arnold voiced his own ambition: to become the toughest defender to encounter in Europe.