Gerrard asked for nastier. Liverpool delivered.

Two draws, a frustrated Steven Gerrard on TNT Sports, and a message that cut right to the point. The Liverpool legend said the Reds were being "too nice" and called for them to be "nastier", stronger in the duel, more willing to take a yellow card, and generally "a little bit uglier to play against". A week on, against a newly-promoted Ipswich Town side with genuine motivation to prove a point, Liverpool answered that call in the most straightforward way possible: three points, a clean sheet, and not a hint of apology for how they got them.

Ipswich had gone straight back down to the Championship after their return to the Premier League, so there was no shortage of intent from the Tractor Boys at Portman Road. Liverpool matched them for hunger and then some, and whilst the second half saw the Reds retreat into a controlled, compact shape with relatively little attacking threat, Andoni Iraola's side held firm. That, in itself, is a detail worth noting. The manager billed as the agent of chaos has shown he can also be coldly pragmatic when the situation demands it, and for Liverpool supporters who have suffered the consequences of fragility in recent matches, that flexibility is genuinely encouraging.

"We needed this win," Iraola told reporters afterwards. "Two points do not reflect our first two games but they are the points we had. Definitely, we couldn't lose anymore today. I'm happy because I think we controlled the game."

Eight minutes and 42 seconds that told you everything

To understand this Liverpool performance properly, you have to go back to the opening exchanges. Before a single stat had settled into anything resembling a pattern, the Reds had already done the damage. Within eight minutes and 42 seconds, Liverpool were two goals to the good, pressing high, winning the ball six times in Ipswich's defensive half, and dominating possession at 71.3%. They were completing dribbles, making penalty area entries, and playing nearly half of their passes in the final third. It was exactly the kind of football supporters had been dreaming about since Iraola's appointment in June.

From that position, Ipswich were rattled. The hosts spent the rest of the match trying to claw their way back into a contest that had effectively been ended before it had properly begun. Liverpool's overall statistics across ninety minutes might not have been especially impressive, but that is the context you need, a side that sprinted out of the blocks and then managed the game intelligently from a position of strength.

"I think especially in the first half we put a lot of pressure to the opposition," Iraola said. "We learned the lessons from the last two games where we conceded early goals. Today we didn't want this to happen."

Gakpo and Isak: a partnership taking shape

If there is one subplot from this match that deserves to be taken seriously, it is the growing connection between Cody Gakpo and Alexander Isak. All three of Isak's goals this season have come from Gakpo assists, and the pair combined to devastating effect here. Isak scored twice from chances worth a combined 0.21 xG, which tells you everything about the quality of his finishing, instinctive, precise, and ruthless in ways that lesser strikers simply would not think to attempt.

Gakpo, meanwhile, was at the heart of everything in the first half. His second assist was genuinely breathtaking: dropping deep to receive possession, identifying a gap created by Milos Kerkez's run dragging a defender out of position, and then producing a trivela pass through the channel that met Isak's run perfectly. It was the kind of audacious delivery that used to be the sole preserve of Mohamed Salah at this club, and it speaks volumes about the responsibility Gakpo has taken on this season. He also won eight of his eleven ground duels and stepped in as a makeshift centre-forward when Isak was withdrawn in the second half, a thankless job done without complaint.

This feels like the beginning of something. If Gakpo and Isak can sustain this level of understanding, Liverpool's season might be about to look very different from the one that started with back-to-back draws.