{"id":343131,"date":"2025-12-13T18:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T18:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343131\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T18:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T18:55:10","slug":"ekitike-brace-sees-liverpool-beat-brighton-2-0-as-it-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343131\/","title":{"rendered":"Ekitike brace sees Liverpool beat Brighton 2-0: as it happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dec 13, 2025, 12:17 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>Liverpool beatBrighton &amp; Hove Albion 2-0 at Anfield on Saturday, thanks to a brace from Hugo Ekitike.<\/p>\n<p>The big talking point before the match was Mohamed Salah&#8217;s status in the squad, he began on the bench, but all those thoughts were brushed aside 47 seconds into the match. A curious clearance from Yankuba Minteh was pounced upon by Joe Gomez who won a header high up in Brighton territory, and it turned out to be a superb pass to Ekitike in the area, he took the ball on his chest and lashed a finish past Bart Verbruggen to give Liverpool the lead.<\/p>\n<p>Ekitike had a couple of more chances in the first half, but couldn&#8217;t take them, and Brighton had one of their own through Diego Gomez, who was brilliantly denied by Alisson Becker in the Liverpool goal. Gomez ended the half with a stroke of a luck, as a high studs up challenge on Florian Wirtz&#8217;s chest was only deemed worthy of a yellow card, even after a VAR check.<\/p>\n<p>Gomez had another big chance in the second half to put Brighton level, but he missed an open goal sliding in at the back-post to meet Mats Wieffer&#8217;s low cross from the right.<\/p>\n<p>Salah, who had come on in the 25th minute to replace the injured Joe Gomez, set up Ekitike&#8217;s second, with a perfectly whipped corner to the back-post, where Ekitike was unmarked and free to fire a bullet header past Verbruggen.<\/p>\n<p>Liverpool had their chances to add to their lead, especially through Salah, who had two breakaway opportunities in injury time, but he put one over the bar from Federico Chiesa&#8217;s pass, and then overhit a pass towards Andy Robertson.<\/p>\n<p>However, in the end, Ekitike&#8217;s two goals were enough for Liverpool&#8217;s first win in four games at Anfield, and only their third Premier League win in the last 11 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 13, 2025, 12:17 PM ET Liverpool beatBrighton &amp; Hove Albion 2-0 at Anfield on Saturday, thanks to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-343131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}