Liverpool stuns Brighton with two early blows to win 2-0 despite seeing less of the ball

It took Liverpool just 20 minutes to settle a match in which they held less than a third of the possession. At Anfield, Andoni Iraola's side beat Brighton and Hove Albion 2-0 with two early blows that Fabian Hürzeler's team could never overturn, despite controlling the ball and producing more attacking volume for the rest of the game.

The first goal came through an unusual route: in the 16th minute, Pascal Groß turned the ball into his own net, a mistake that put Liverpool 1-0 up without them having to do much to earn it. Barely four minutes later, lightning struck twice, this time with a proper name attached. In the 20th minute, Alexander Isak finished with his left foot from point-blank range, cutting in from the right side of the box and slotting it low by the post, after a Bradley Barcola assist. 2-0, and the match was all but decided before the half-hour mark.

The curious thing is that this early double strike did not come from any kind of Liverpool dominance. Quite the opposite: Brighton had clear chances even before the goals, with a Yasin Ayari effort clipping the crossbar in the 13th minute, and kept creating them afterward, like the same player's shot that struck the post in the 35th minute. The visitors pushed for the full 90 minutes but kept running into Liverpool's resistance and their own lack of precision: Charalampos Kostoulas, Diego Gomez, Luka Vuskovic and Georginio Rutter all tried their luck without success at various points in the second half.

A match of possession versus efficiency

The numbers make that contradiction clear. Brighton controlled 64.4% of possession to Liverpool's 35.6%, and finished with more shots (17 to 13) and more corners (4 to 2). Yet the home side was far sharper in front of goal, with 4 shots on target compared to just one for Brighton.

The expected goals figure calculated after the fact from the match's shots reflects that parity in chances created beyond the scoreline: 1.23 for Liverpool against 1.424 for Brighton. Those numbers suggest a far more even match than the final result showed, with the visitors even slightly ahead in the quality of chances created.

That also stands in contrast to our pre-match projection, where we gave Brighton a 39% chance of winning, Liverpool 34%, and a draw 27%, with expected goals of 1.51 for the home side and 1.61 for the visitors. The final result, with Liverpool cruising to victory on the scoreboard despite being outplayed, ended up far from that forecast.

Brighton tried to respond with substitutions like Georginio Rutter and Jack Hinshelwood, and pressed hard in the closing stages, including a generous four minutes of stoppage time. But Liverpool's defense, with Virgil van Dijk at the back, held firm without any serious scares after the opening quarter of an hour.

What the result means in the standings

In the Premier League table, both teams arrived with tight records: Brighton sat third with 16 points from 8 matches (5 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses), while Liverpool were fourth with 15 points from the same number of games (4 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss), just a point separating the two sides before kickoff. With today's win, Liverpool made clear that even when the ball isn't on their side, clinical finishing remains their best weapon at Anfield.