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For long spells nothing happened. At one point it was so quiet you could hear a distant plane droning by. But Liverpool will not care. Sometimes you have to get back on the horse however you can, and if that requires a stepladder, an awkward bunk from a scornful stablehand and an ungainly scramble into the saddle, so be it. Any sort of victory is welcome after six defeats in their past seven league games, and one in which Britain’s most expensive player finally scores his first league goal for the club even more so. The history books will record that Liverpool won their second league game in 71 days, that Alexander Isak scored his first league goal since his acrimonious move from Newcastle, and that Cody Gakpo added a late ­second with a smart swivel, but the history books did not have to sit through that first half. It is the nature of the London Stadium that bad games there seem worse than elsewhere because everything seems so distant, and the nature of West Ham in recent times that there are a lot of bad games. The main intrigue came with the release of the lineups. As Liverpool’s wobble became a blip became a slump, the question was asked: what would it take for Mohamed Salah to be left out? The answer, it turned out, was three or more goals conceded in three successive games for the first time in 75 years. At some point, a flair player who leaves his full-back exposed is a luxury a team can no longer afford. Liverpool’s shape returned to 4‑2‑3-1, with Dominik Szoboszlai taking Salah’s place on the right. There was no danger of the industrious Hungarian not doing the leg work to protect Joe Gomez, whose selection at right-back was forced by the injuries to Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong. League Cup games excluded, it was Gomez’s first start of the season and came despite him requiring an injection in his knee last week. That meant Florian Wirtz as the central creator, the role he was signed to play. The suggestion all season has been that this is the shape Slot wants for Liverpool; it was the shape he used in winning the Eredivisie with Feyenoord, and the summer signings make more sense in the context of a transition away from 4-3-3. But a 4-2-3-1 with a non-defender such as Salah was always a risk. That perhaps has been the biggest tactical issue for Liverpool this season: it was a post-Salah team with Salah still in it. Wirtz is yet to score or register an assist in the Premier League since his £100m+ move from Bayer Leverkusen but, not for the first time this season, he looked industrious and tidy without that translating into a huge amount of threat. His tendency to drift to the left means that there are some glimmers of a partnership building with Gakpo, but as yet he and Isak are not on the same wavelength. It was a long Virgil van Dijk pass aimed at Gakpo that almost brought a breakthrough for Wirtz six minutes before half-time as Aaron ­Wan-Bissaka’s attempt to intercept fell for him. There was nothing wrong with his shot, sidefooted towards the bottom corner, but Wirtz at the moment is in one of those spells where nothing quite goes right and Alphonse Areola got down well to make a stretching save. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion This was Isak’s fifth start of the season as Slot continues to try to play him into form, although that ­decision was perhaps made easier by the back injury that forced Hugo Ekitiké off against PSV Eindhoven. He came close to scoring his first league goal for Liverpool after 21 minutes with a spectacular falling volley, but Areola starfished in front of him to beat the ball away. That long-awaited first goal did, though, finally arrive on the hour. A corner was half-cleared, Wirtz refused to be panicked into a cross and slipped in Gakpo, and his cutback was fired in first time by Isak. It will be a long time yet before he pays off his £135m fee, but this was the finish of an extremely high-class player. All the focus may have been on Liverpool but the goal made clear that West Ham, for all their little spike in form, are also very ordinary. They were not helped by Lucas Paquetá being sent off after collecting two bookings for dissent in quick succession. Solidity and the failings of others may be enough to save them but they are still a long way off making the fact that they had the ninth-highest average attendance in the world last season any less bewildering. Liverpool will surely improve. Confidence will return. At least some of the new signings will settle and they will adapt to the new shape. Liverpool will celebrate the win, but this was a poor game of football.