Liverpool survived a huge scare as two clangers from West Ham goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski and a late winner from Sadio Mane saw them go 22 points clear at the top of the Premier League table.
The Pole was at fault for both Georginio Wijnaldum’s opener and Mo Salah’s second-half leveller, which came after goals from Issa Diop and substitute Pablo Fornals had threatened to bring the Reds’ 43-game unbeaten run to an end.
Instead, Mane’s 81st minute tap-in saw Jurgen Klopp’s men earned a 3-2 win, equallling Man City’s Premier League record of 18 straight wins, and they remain on course to match Arsenal’s feat of going through an entire campaign unbeaten.
With captain Jordan Henderson missing because of a hamstring injury, Klopp named Naby Keita in a Liverpool side that was otherwise unchanged from the one beaten at Atletico Madrid last week.
David Moyes, meanwhile, handed a surprise start to 19-year-old right-back Jeremy Ngakia, who had only made his senior debut in the reverse fixture last month, as he named a more adventurous line-up than the one which had drawn much criticism for its overly-defensive approach in the defeat at Man City.
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It took the hosts less than ten minutes to open the scoring as Lukasz Fabianski palmed Wijnaldum’s header tamely into the bottom corner after a typically inviting cross from Trent Alexander-Arnold.
But fears that the confidence-shorn Hammers would crumble were quickly dismissed when Diop powered home a header at the other end, with question marks over both Wijnaldum’s desertion of his near-post duties and Alisson’s attempted save, though the error was nothing like as glaring as his counterpart’s.
Alexander-Arnold was enjoying a productive evening down the right and fired just wide of the far corner after a bursting overlap, before another of his superb deliveries was glanced against the crossbar by Virgil Van Dijk.
It had been an encouraging half for Moyes, so when he lost Tomas Soucek to injury just two minutes into the second-half he must have been cursing his luck. Instead, it proved a blessing in disguise as his replacement, Fornals, put the cat amongst the pigeons by sweeping Declan Rice’s cross beyond Alisson to give the visitors a shock lead.
Klopp’s immediate response was to send on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, but once again it would be Fabianski that was ultimately responsible for his side finding the net, somehow letting Salah’s low effort from Andrew Robertson’s cut-back squirm through his legs and over the line
A less than convincing stop from the by-now rattled Fabianski almost allowed Firmino to score on the rebound, only for the woodwork to rather get in his way.
But Mane did find the touch to keep this relentless winning machine rolling, nudging over from Alexander-Arnold’s pass, before having a near-identical effort rightly chalked off by VAR minutes later.
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