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West Ham leapfrog Liverpool in Premier League and end Reds’ 25-match unbeaten run as Alisson endures nightmare performance at London Stadium

Alisson had a match to forget as his errors, combined with some questionable Liverpool defending, contributed to the Reds’ 3-2 defeat at West Ham.

The Hammers went ahead early on when Pablo Fornals’ corner dropped straight into the net as Alisson could only flap at the ball from the left.

Trent Alexander-Arnold levelled with a pinpoint free-kick but West Ham retook the lead as Fornals’ struck home on the counter, however, Alisson perhaps should have got a stronger hand on it.

West Ham then extended their lead from a corner as an unmarked Kurt Zouma nodded it home.

Liverpool got some late hope as Divock Origi halved the deficit and the visitors should have got an equaliser in stoppage-time as Sadio Mane headed wide from close range.

But it was another memorable match for the Hammers, who end Liverpool’s 25-match unbeaten run and leapfrog Jurgen Klopp’s side into third.

West Ham took the lead in the fourth minute when Alisson, under pressure from Angelo Ogbonna as he leapt for the ball, touched Fornals’ corner into the net.

After a lengthy VAR review, for a possible foul and then handball, the goal was awarded, much to Klopp’s dismay.

Diogo Jota, starting in place of the injured Roberto Firmino, could have equalised on the half hour but sent his header from Jordan Henderson’s cross over the crossbar, while Alexander-Arnold’s volley was also too high.

But it was not the first-half performance of a side who had scored at least three goals in their last six away matches in the league.

However, with five minutes of the half remaining Liverpool were awarded a contentious free-kick on the edge of the area when Mohamed Salah went down under Declan Rice’s challenge.

West Ham lined-up an eight-man wall, complete with Fornals as the ‘draught excluder’, but Alexander-Arnold bypassed it with a simple one-yard pass to Salah to his right.

It left the England right-back with the simpler task of lifting the ball over Jarrod Bowen on the end of the wall, rather than the imposing Rice, Dawson and Tomas Soucek, and he curled a superb effort up and over while leaving Hammers keeper Lukasz Fabianski totally wrong-footed.

Michail Antonio passed up a glorious chance to put West Ham back ahead when he was sent clean through by Said Benrahma, only for his control to badly let him down at the wrong time, and Bowen was thwarted by a perfectly-timed Virgil Van Dijk challenge in the area in stoppage time.

At the start of the second half Dawson’s header from another corner came back off the crossbar, while at the other end Sadio Mane’s volley was kept out by Fabianski.

It was Bowen, a player Klopp readily admits he admires, who unlocked the Liverpool defence in the 67th minute after Dawson and Rice smuggled the ball away for West Ham from inside their own half.

The forward ran at the back-pedalling Liverpool rearguard, drawing defenders in, before slipping the ball to Fornals who ran through to fire past Alisson.

There was more to come. Antonio and Fornals were denied by Alisson before Bowen floated in a 75th-minute corner and the unmarked Zouma nodded it in at the far post.

Origi turned and fired home from 18 yards to set up a grandstand finish but Liverpool could not find an equaliser – Mane coming closest when he headed wide in stoppage time – and Hammers boss David Moyes celebrated a place in the top three and a first win over Klopp in eight attempts.