Improvement from Forest and Leeds leaves West Ham looking vulnerable

Mo Salah may have done his best to hog the headlines but there was still plenty of drama and action on the pitch as well in Week 15 of the Premier League.

Liverpool's 3-3 draw with Leeds was the most eye-catching result, but there was plenty to analyse elsewhere and Steve Davies is on hand to look at the big talking points. 

Here’s what we learned last weekend:

Irons could be in the fire for a while

If I'm a West Ham fan right now I don't know whether to be buoyed by events over the weekend or seriously concerned.

The Hammers have just emerged from a week which featured a home date with Liverpool, a trip to Manchester United and Sunday's hop down to Brighton.

At the start of the season if you'd have offered West Ham two points from those three fixtures there would probably have been a resigned shrug of acceptance.

But having got two points they find themselves back in the bottom three and acutely aware that the sides around them are improving. Apart from Wolves, obviously. And Burnley for that matter.

The state of the league table is an obvious concern. But should that be outweighed by the fact that at Old Trafford and the Amex West Ham delivered almost textbook away performances against supposedly superior sides? 

If they had collected four points, or even six, few would have suggested an injustice.

Nuno needs to keep Lucas Paqueta interested and Jarrod Bowen fit but, even allowing for that, you do get a sense that the scrap for 18th spot could be as riveting as anything else this season, and it may go right down to the wire.

The Irons, 11-10 shots to be relegated, are definitely still in the fire.

Iraola's solutions deserve utmost respect

The one team I was happy to take on at the weekend was Bournemouth, but yet again I paid the price for misjudging Andoni Iraola.

Oh, and presuming that Chelsea are consistent enough to be trusted anywhere, but that's another story.

The Cherries had been on the slide with no wins in five before Saturday's visit from the so-called world champions, and three games in a week would surely test the energy levels of Iraola's hard-working, tireless and aggressive pressers.

Tyler Adams, their rock in the engine room, was out, so too Ryan Christie, who Iraola has converted into a cultured central midfielder.

That meant a summons for another man for all positions, Marcus Tavernier, to drop anchor alongside Alex Scott and keep Chelsea's notionally classy midfield at bay.

Tavernier has played there before but not alongside Scott, yet it looked like they were born on the same wavelength.

Bournemouth didn't win, the 0-0 draw extending their winless streak to six matches, but they were the better side because they have the better manager with better imagination, better team spirit and so on.

The Cherries are on the slide but it's temporary. Iraola will make sure of that.

Arne Slot looks lost as Liverpool managerCredit: Getty Images

Anfield farce could turn into tragedy for Slot

And so to the buses, the one Mo Salah claims he's been thrown under, and the one he's now thrown his boss under.

Player power being what it is, I have no doubt that Arne Slot, odds-on to be the next manager to go, will indeed be forced to leave Anfield sooner than planned.

That's not all Salah's fault, no matter how deliberate his disrespectful, self-indulgent, Iago-esque soliloquy was designed to be at Elland Road on Saturday night.

But for Liverpool, this startling turn of events could not be more unhelpful.

For whatever reasons, and they appear to be manifold, Liverpool are struggling. They won't win the league and probably won't even finish in the top four – they are evens not to, which looks a top bet.

Watching them flounder in the 3-3 draw against Leeds, seeing good players make wrong choices, hit bad passes and lose possession constantly, was truly compelling.

How have the likes of Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Andrew Robertson, Alexis Mac Allister gone off the boil so quickly and so collectively? Florian Wirtz was a world-beater with Leverkusen last season. Who knew?

Slot may or may not be the root cause of the champions' fall, but clearly something has gone very wrong, very quickly and it's hard to see this ending well for any of the leading characters.

Another VAR kick in the teeth

Back to the Amex and VAR's astonishing ability to perplex.

Anyone who saw the game and Brighton's late equaliser on Sunday was surely delighted that an accidental handball was ignored by VAR Tony Harrington before Georginio Rutter pounced.

But how on earth could the same goggleboxer not have clocked Charalampos Kostoulas almost rearranging the face of Hammers defender Dinos Mavropanos with an overhead kick that was way beyond dangerous in a crowded box?

No wonder Nuno was miffed.

Read more:

 Mohamed Salah odds-on to leave Liverpool in January after being dropped for draw at Leeds 

Click for free bets and betting offers from the Racing Post

Commercial notice: This article contains affiliate links. Offers are handpicked and come from operators our experts have first-hand experience of. Opening an account via one of these links will earn revenue for the Racing Post, which will be used to continue producing our award-winning coverage of horseracing and sports betting8