Liverpool have not won a Premier League game at Anfield since 25 April, when they beat Crystal Palace there. Three home matches have passed since, all drawn, two in the closing weeks of last season and one against Nottingham Forest a fortnight ago. They have not gone this many home league games without a win since a run of eight between December 2020 and March 2021, two draws and six defeats in the Covid winter. Fulham arrive bottom of the table with no points at all, which makes this look like the obvious afternoon to end it, and makes it rather more interesting than that.
Andoni Iraola has already diagnosed the problem himself. His side have scored exactly twice in every game he has taken charge of. They have also started badly, gone behind, and spent the rest of the match recovering. He said on Friday that he would like Liverpool to score first, because everything after that becomes easier. They have five points from three games. Arsenal, who can go top on their own at Sunderland tonight, have nine.
The one home league game of his tenure is the evidence. Liverpool had 70 per cent of the ball against Nottingham Forest on 29 August and lost the expected-goals count 2.30 to 1.61. They trailed twice, to Dan Ndoye and then a Morgan Gibbs-White penalty, and were rescued eight minutes from time by Victor Muñoz on his full debut. Forest are now unbeaten in three visits to Anfield.
Fulham are precisely the wrong opponent for a slow start. They have lost all three of their league games by a single goal, to Chelsea, Sunderland and Crystal Palace, and Iraola's reading of them was blunt. Judged on the performances rather than the table, he said, you would expect them to have “four, five points at least”. They have held over 60 per cent possession and he thinks they are difficult to press, because they are technically good.
What is at stake for them is heavier than a first point. Lose here and Fulham will have lost their opening four top-flight matches for only the third time in the club's history. The other two were 1951/52 and 2020/21, and both ended in relegation. That second season also produced their most recent league win at Anfield, Mario Lemina's goal in March 2021.
Álvaro Arbeloa returns to a ground where he spent two and a half years as a player, in his first season as Fulham head coach, with a diagnosis of his own. His players' first thought on the ball, he said this week, should be what happens when they lose it. The transition is the problem, and he has at least named it.
Iraola's own problems are absences. Conor Bradley, Giovanni Leoni, Hugo Ekitike, Joe Gomez and Federico Chiesa are all out, and Cody Gakpo is a doubt with an adductor issue. Bradley Barcola came off on Wednesday with cramp rather than an injury and is expected to be available.
Alexander Isak is the reason Liverpool should still win it. Three goals in his first four appearances have already matched his entire Premier League return from an injury-ruined first season, and leave him among the division's leading scorers. The question is not whether he scores. It is when.
