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Only one team has scored fewer goals from set-pieces in the Premier League than Liverpool this season.

But if the Reds’ route to a winner against West Ham was unlikely, the identity of the player behind it was wholly appropriate.

Alexis Mac Allister has been a driving force for Liverpool ever since arriving from Brighton for what has long been considered a bargain £35million almost two years ago.

But pivotal moments are where the Argentina international regularly shines.

West Ham wanted a foul on Paqueta but that Mac Allister's strong challenge was rightly unpunished was perhaps recompense for the amount of times the Liverpool man was left in a heap by an opponent.

And his overall performance merited such a decisive contribution, marrying his usual grit and neat passing with a goal threat when denied by the legs of Areola in the first half and then crashing a fierce free-kick against the crossbar shortly after the break.

It may not have been quite as eye-catching as his goal at Fulham the previous weekend.

And there was little chance of Salah allowing the occasion to pass unmarked.

Having soon got the better of teenager marker Oliver Scarles – how the 19-year-old left-back, making only his sixth Premier League start, will have learned from the experience – Salah was close with one curling effort before unlocking the West Ham defence for the opener on 18 minutes, turning away from Scarles on to Ibrahima Konate’s ball down the line before his low cross invited Luis Diaz to tap in.

It meant Salah has now been directly involved in 45 Premier League goals this term – 27 strikes, 18 assists – which is a new record for a player in a 38-game season.

Diaz continues to end the campaign as Liverpool’s form forward with three goals and four assists in the last eight league games.

But this has been Salah’s season.

And nobody – least of all Arne Slot – could have expected his first season in charge to potentially prove so successful.

The Dutchman marked a half-century of games as Reds boss by overseeing a 36th victory, by some the distance the most of any Liverpool manager in that time period

Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish are next with 29 triumphs.

The first target of the Premier League campaign, Champions League qualification, had been assured the previous day.

And beating West Ham, if hardly the most convincing of triumphs, ensured any sense of complacency within the Liverpool squad that was in danger of creeping in against Fulham was comprehensively banished.

This time next week, Slot could have become only the fifth manager to win the Premier League in his first season in the dugout in England
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