Alexander Isak acknowledged that scoring his first Premier League goal for Liverpool ended a longer wait than he had anticipated.<\/p>\n
His debut had been delayed while Arne Slot worked to rebuild Isak\u2019s fitness after a summer spent on strike, and the forward then suffered a muscular injury in October. Slot was preparing to take him off in the match at London Stadium while the score was still goalless, which would have extended the run without a league goal. Instead Isak converted with a crisp, side-footed finish into the bottom corner of Alphonse Areola\u2019s well-guarded net and Liverpool won 2\u20130 over West Ham.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been waiting for it and chasing it,\u201d a visibly relieved Isak told BBC\u2019s Match of the Day after the goal. \u201cSometimes it takes longer than you expect but happy to score a goal and help towards the win today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wait had stretched to six games, 71 days and 378 minutes of Premier League football. It was not a drought caused by wasted opportunities but by a lack of chances. During his 67 minutes on the pitch at the London Stadium this weekend he registered two shots on target, more than he had managed across the rest of the season combined, when he had one.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never easy,\u201d Isak said of his goal drought, \u201cas a striker you need momentum. Sometimes you go through these patches but hopefully this will be helpful towards building good form. We defended really well and scored twice so happy days.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Slot the overriding feeling after the victory was relief: relief that the club\u2019s poor run was halted, relief that his decision to drop Mohamed Salah was rewarded with the most competent defensive display of the season, and relief that the most expensive player in Premier League history had finally scored in the competition. Asked if the goal felt significant for Isak, Slot told Sky Sports, \u201cYep, I think it does,\u201d and added, \u201cHe is a top striker. This finish was very good. I kept him in just long enough for him to get a goal for the team and himself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alexander Isak said the wait for his first Premier League goal took longer than he expected. Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172,1125],"tags":[195,299],"class_list":["post-4805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","category-strikers","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}