Isak Leads Liverpool to First Victory Over Ipswich
Andoni Iraola did not have to wait long this time. Ten games without a victory marked his Premier League baptism at Bournemouth. At Liverpool, it took three matches. And it was over inside nine minutes at Portman Road.
Alexander Isak, ruthless and revived, ripped through Ipswich with two early goals that owed as much to his movement as to Kjell Scherpen’s nightmare in goal. Liverpool then shut the game down with a cold, controlled efficiency that spoke volumes about their new manager’s demands.
Lightning start, fragile gloves
Portman Road was bouncing at kick-off, a newly promoted side sensing a scalp. Six minutes later, the air went out of the place.
Cody Gakpo, thriving in Iraola’s high-energy blueprint, slid a perfectly weighted ball into Isak’s stride. The Swede didn’t need a second invitation. He drove his shot straight at Scherpen, but the goalkeeper’s wrists crumpled and the ball burst through him and into the net. Soft, avoidable, costly.
Ipswich barely had time to reset.
Three minutes on, another long Liverpool ball turned into calamity. Scherpen came wandering from his line, misjudged the situation completely, and Isak punished him with a calm, low finish from the left. Same combination: Gakpo to Isak. Same outcome: Scherpen exposed, Ipswich floored.
Two-nil, nine minutes gone. Iraola’s first win already felt inevitable.
Ipswich respond, but damage is done
To their credit, Gary O’Neil’s side did not fold. Once the chaos of the opening spell subsided, Ipswich started to play.
Leif Davis rose to meet a cross from the right on the half-hour, only to head wide with Liverpool suddenly looking less secure. It was a reminder that, for all their control, Iraola’s team can still be rattled when the press is broken.
Isak thought he had finished the job before the interval. Florian Wirtz, sharp and inventive, whipped in a superb cross and Isak buried it for what looked like a first-half hat-trick. The flag went up. He had gone a fraction too early. The home crowd roared at the reprieve; the sense of danger remained.
Yet Ipswich kept grinding, backed by a full house that refused to turn on their players despite the early collapse. When they did force Liverpool backwards, the visitors simply sank into shape and waited for their moment to spring out again.
Iraola’s Liverpool show a harder edge
This was not a wild, front-foot performance from Liverpool from first whistle to last. It didn’t need to be.
The first half was about aggression, the second about control. Iraola admitted as much: his team “started really strong” and then managed the game, keeping Ipswich at arm’s length and securing a first clean sheet of his reign.
Isak remained the headline act, but Iraola’s comments underlined the bigger picture. The goals, he insisted, would come if the striker stayed fit and engaged. His “fights” with Isak, as he put it, are about the other side of the game: the pressing, the link play, the dirty work. On this evidence, the message is landing.
Liverpool’s press bit harder and higher than in their opening two draws. They repeatedly won the ball in advanced areas, feeding Isak and Gakpo in dangerous pockets. When they had to drop deeper, they did so without fuss, rarely allowing Ipswich a clear sight of goal.
Barcola arrives, controversy follows
The second half brought a glimpse of Liverpool’s future. Bradley Barcola, the £123m signing from PSG, stepped off the bench on 66 minutes to make his Premier League debut. By then, Liverpool had eased off the throttle, focusing on structure and discipline rather than chasing a third.
The game still simmered.
Ipswich felt Jérémy Jacquet should have been sent off. Already booked for a foul on Emersonn, the defender went through the back of him again early in the second half. No foul, no second yellow, and an incandescent reaction from the home support.
Then came a Liverpool penalty that wasn’t. VAR intervened to spot a foul by Davis on Dominik Szoboszlai, sending referee Darren England to the monitor. The replay revealed Szoboszlai had been offside in the build-up. Decision overturned, no spot-kick.
O’Neil, though, saved his sharpest words for Liverpool’s game management. He pointed to his own goalkeeper being hurried up at Old Trafford and argued that Iraola’s side were allowed to “kill the game” far more comfortably here. The officials, he said, still reached the right conclusion on the penalty, but the inconsistency over timewasting clearly grated.
The Ipswich No 1 curse strikes again
If there was a single, brutal difference between the sides, it stood in Ipswich’s goal.
Scherpen’s first-half display reopened an uncomfortable wound. Last time Ipswich came up, Arijanet Muric was supposed to be the steady hand from Burnley. Instead, his season was littered with high-profile errors at exactly the wrong moments.
A change of keeper this summer was meant to end the drama. Scherpen arrived from Union Saint-Gilloise with the brief to bring calm. Instead, he left Portman Road with the sense of a curse hanging over the shirt.
Both Liverpool goals were avoidable. Both were his. At this level, those mistakes are brutal. Ipswich spent long spells competing well, sticking to O’Neil’s plan and unsettling a stronger side. One poor decision, one weak save, and all that work vanished.
They cannot afford to fight two opponents every week: the one in front of them and the one in their own six-yard box. Scherpen needs to settle, fast, or the narrative around Ipswich’s goalkeepers will only grow louder.
Isak leaves last season behind
For Isak, this felt like a line in the sand. He spoke afterwards about a “long injury” and a “difficult season” that he now considers “behind” him. A normal pre-season, a clear attacking structure, and a manager who wants his No 9 on the ball high up the pitch – the pieces are finally in place.
Two games into Iraola’s tenure, Isak looks like the focal point Liverpool will build around. Fit, sharp, and trusted to lead the press, he has started the season the way he wanted: scoring, stretching defences, setting the tone.
Liverpool leave Suffolk with their first win, their first clean sheet, and a sense that Iraola’s ideas are beginning to bite. Ipswich leave with another defeat, a goalkeeper under scrutiny, and a lingering question that won’t go away:
Is the No 1 shirt at Portman Road a job… or a curse?
