In the old Olympic Stadium, it just had to be all about a guy named Mo.
Salah, this time. Not Farah, but fine athletes both.
With one sprint in the lane next to Sadio Mane, Salah set up this Liverpool victory , a victory he capped with a spot of late, left-footed sweetness.
Few recruitment policies have come under as much scrutiny as Liverpool’s.
Most observers remain convinced Jurgen Klopp should be in the market for a new keeper.
Klopp made his current number one captain. Simon Mignolet, skipper. Three words you never imagined typing very often.
In front of Mignolet, Klopp has well-documented defensive issues and the criticism has come for who he did NOT buy in the summer.
Yet Salah might just turn out to be the best piece of business done by any of the top clubs.
He could yet be the signing of the season.
He is certainly one of the main reasons why optimism should not be in short supply around Anfield.
One week Klopp is a phoney, the next he is back to being a messiah.
The truth, obviously, is that he is somewhere in between, a decent coach with a positive approach and the odd blindspot.
And it would certainly not be stretching it to suggest he is a better judge of an attacking player than he is a defensive one.
In his acquisition of Salah, he has picked a beauty.
Game-changers are few and far between. Salah is one, starting and finishing the gun-to-tape counter-attack that set Liverpool on their way.
When he selected the bottom corner to give Liverpool a fourth, it was his 12th Liverpool goal of the season.
From his spell at Chelsea, there was a perception that Salah was not a natural finisher, that his trickery, incisiveness and speed were undermined by a lack of composure.
That perception has proved to be nonsense.
If you like your stats, his figures in Italy over the last couple of seasons were mightily impressive, scoring with around 19 percent of his attempts.
Trust me on this, that is good. That is elite finishing.
It is shaping up to be even better in his second crack with an English club.
The largest individual tally for a season since Luis Suarez left Liverpool has been a 14-goal haul for Philippe Coutinho.
He will not find every defence as shoddy and as porous as West Ham’s but Salah will coast past that mark before Christmas.
That it was £36million well spent is already unequivocal.
The same can not yet be said about the capture of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain for a similar fee.
But this was certainly his most important contribution on Liverpool duty.
And as a slightly incredulous look betrayed, the irony was probably not lost on Klopp.
Oxlade-Chamberlain has been shaping up as a transfer stick with which to thrash the Liverpool manager.
A mystery buy even by the fluctuating standards of that Anfield recruitment policy.
Yet his first goal could not have been better timed.
It meant Klopp only had to endure about 55 seconds of mental anguish.
Joel Matip had doubled Liverpool’s lead but when Manuel Lanzini halved the West Ham deficit early in the second half, with the aid of some ropey defending, the prospect of Liverpool panic loomed briefly.
Briefly, as in less than a minute.
Oxlade-Chamberlain’s beating of the hapless Joe Hart at the second attempt confirmed what should always have been a bloodless victory.
It should also remind Oxlade-Chamberlain that any fanciful notions of playing in some Steven Gerrard role are ridiculous.
If that finally hits home, he might win back his place in the England squad and might prove a useful recruit for Liverpool and Klopp.
Not as useful as Salah, though.
Klopp has copped a lot of flak for who he hasn’t bought but in Mo, he has bought a marvel.
Tell us what you think
Comment Below