Ipswich 0-2 Liverpool: Isak settles it inside nine minutes

Liverpool won the opening match of the third round at Portman Road on Friday night, and they had it won before most of the ground had settled. Alexander Isak scored in the sixth minute and again in the ninth, and the remaining eighty-one minutes never seriously threatened to change the result.

It finished 0-2, and the scoreline flatters neither side in the way scorelines usually do. Ipswich had more shots than Liverpool. They simply had nine catastrophic minutes at the start of the match, and in this division that is enough.

Two goals, two through balls, one supplier

Both goals came the same way. On six minutes Cody Gakpo slid a through ball into the right side of the box and Isak finished right-footed into the top right corner. On nine minutes Gakpo did it again on the opposite side, and Isak finished left-footed into the middle of the goal.

Two assists in three minutes, both through balls, both cutting a defensive line that had no answer to the pass or to the run behind it. It is the kind of double that decides a match without ever really being a passage of pressure: Liverpool did not lay siege to Portman Road, they went through it twice and then stopped.

For Isak it continues a start to the season that now reads three goals in three matches, having also scored the equaliser at Anfield against Nottingham Forest last weekend.

What Ipswich actually did

The temptation with a 0-2 is to assume the home side were overrun. They were not. Ipswich finished with fourteen shots to Liverpool’s ten and five on target to Liverpool’s seven, and they had 45.1% of the ball, which against this opponent is a respectable share.

What they did not have was a way past Alisson. Zian Flemming had the clearest of the second-half chances, a right-footed effort from outside the box on seventy-six minutes that the Liverpool goalkeeper saved in the middle of his goal.

At the other end Kjell Scherpen had already kept the margin at two, saving a Dominik Szoboszlai shot from outside the box on forty minutes and an Alexis Mac Allister header two minutes into the second half. Without those the night would have been considerably worse.

A booking count that tells its own story

Liverpool committed thirteen fouls to Ipswich’s six and collected three of the match’s four yellow cards: Mac Allister on ten minutes, Jérémy Jacquet on fifty-two and Miloš Kerkez on fifty-seven, all of them for bad fouls. Julio Enciso was booked for Ipswich on forty-one.

That is the shape of a side protecting a two-goal lead for eighty minutes rather than extending it. Liverpool were not under sustained pressure, but they were content to break up the game rather than play it, and the referee’s notebook records exactly that.

Where it leaves both clubs

Liverpool go to five points from three matches, unbeaten, with a goal difference of plus two. They have drawn at Newcastle, drawn at home with Forest and won here, which is a start that is solid without being the sort that wins titles by October.

Ipswich stay on three points from three, and their goal difference drops to minus four. That is a harsher number than their season deserves in some ways: they beat Sunderland 2-1 on the opening weekend and only lost this one to a nine-minute spell. But they also shipped five at Old Trafford last weekend, and eight conceded in two matches is a pattern rather than an accident.

The promoted clubs have not, collectively, had a bad start to this season. Hull City are third. Coventry are still looking for their first point. Ipswich sit between the two, thirteenth, with a win, a heavy defeat and a night at Portman Road where they did most things adequately and lost anyway.

Three matches, three different Liverpools

The most interesting thing about Liverpool’s start is how little the three performances resemble each other. At Newcastle they drew 2-2. At home to Forest they had 69.6% of the ball, went behind on twenty-four minutes and needed until the eighty-second to draw level. Here they scored twice in the opening nine minutes and then had 54.9% of the possession and ten shots across the remaining eighty-one.

Five points from those three afternoons is a fair reflection. What it does not tell you is which of the three is the actual team, and the answer to that will not arrive for another month at least.

The rest of the round

This was the Friday fixture; the other nine are spread across Saturday and Sunday, and they include Arsenal against Chelsea at the Emirates with both clubs on six points. Liverpool’s win means the sides above them now play knowing exactly what is required.

You can play the rest of the season out on the Premier League simulator on this site — the fixture list is the real one and the table sorts the way the Premier League sorts it, so whatever you test starts from exactly where the division stands this morning.