Liverpool vs Brighton: Can Anfield Regain Its Power?
Anfield waits for an answer.
Liverpool walk into Sunday’s meeting with Brighton carrying goals, belief and a centre-forward in ruthless form. They also carry a nagging flaw they still haven’t fixed: their own stadium no longer guarantees victory.
The mood around the club has shifted in recent weeks. Results have improved, the football has more snap and purpose, and there is a sense of a team beginning to accelerate. Yet Anfield, once a weekly statement of power, has gone oddly quiet in the numbers that matter. The aura has thinned.
Isak sharpens Liverpool’s edge
Alexander Isak has cut through that uncertainty in the most direct way a striker can. By scoring when it matters.
He returned from a brief injury lay-off to start at Brentford and settled a tricky, tense game with the winner in a 2-1 comeback. Liverpool had trailed, Brentford went down to 10 men, and the contest turned scrappy. It was exactly the kind of afternoon that can drift away from a side still rebuilding its authority. Isak refused to let it.
Days later, against Villarreal in Europe, he came off the bench and immediately looked back in rhythm as Liverpool overturned a 2-0 deficit to win 4-3 and keep their perfect continental record intact. Wild, chaotic, fun. Not entirely convincing, but it underlined one thing: this Liverpool team will keep swinging.
Isak’s own assessment, speaking to the club’s website, was blunt and upbeat. A short spell out, no real rust, and a sense that the team is “in a good place”. His numbers back up the confidence. Five goals in six Premier League appearances this season. Five in his last five league games. Four of those strikes have directly decided victories against Ipswich Town, Bournemouth and Brentford.
When Liverpool need a cutting edge, they know where it is.
A fortress with cracks
The problem lies behind him, not in front.
Liverpool are winless in their last five home league matches. For a club with serious ambitions, that is not a quirk, it is a warning. Anfield used to suffocate visiting teams; recently, it has offered them oxygen.
You have to go back to the early 2000s and the pandemic season to find longer home droughts in the Premier League: seven games without a win in 2002-03, eight in 2020-21. Those runs left scars. This one threatens to do the same if it drags on.
Brighton’s arrival offers a chance to break the pattern without stepping into the unknown. History leans Liverpool’s way. They have lost just one of their last nine home league games against Brighton, winning six and drawing two. The single blemish came in February 2021, a 1-0 defeat that still stands out precisely because it was so rare.
So the equation feels brutally simple. Liverpool have the in-form striker. They carry the stronger recent momentum. They face an opponent they usually manage at Anfield.
Now comes the real test: can they turn all of that into something more than promise and potential, and make Anfield feel like Anfield again in the league?
