If Liverpool’s spluttering forwards end up remembering this as the day when their luck turned then they will owe a big debt of gratitude to Yehor Yarmolyuk. This was a game with a very clear before and after.

Andoni Iraola will hope surviving one of the toughest tests the Premier League has to offer is a sign his methods are starting to work, but Liverpool’s manager will not forget it was a very different contest after Yarmolyuk’s red card for a butt on Jérémy Jacquet left Brentford trying to defend a 1-0 lead with 10 men for the entire second half.

• ‘We are not in the right physical condition’

• Spurs beaten 3-0 at Brentford in Premier League opener

Roberto De Zerbi said that Tottenham are “not a team” after they opened their season with a humiliating 3-0 defeat away to Brentford.

Spurs are looking to kick on after almost going down last season and are expected to spend more than £300m this summer but they were handed a rude awakening at the Gtech Community Stadium. Brentford outclassed the north Londoners and left De Zerbi rueing a lack of fight from his players, bemoaning his side’s physical conditioning and suggesting that the pre-season tour of Australia was less than ideal.

Continue down this road and it will not be long before the chants of “Lincoln away” start up again. This was the start of Tottenham’s brave new era but there was no sign of any change. The old flaws were still there in a cowardly display – with and without the ball – and after a summer of extravagant spending it will alarm Roberto De Zerbi that his side opened the season looking like relegation candidates rather than contenders for European football.

If anything it was a reminder that winning the transfer window is not the same as winning on the pitch. There has been plenty of excitable predictions about Spurs, whose outlay is likely to soon surpass £300m, but are they based on anything substantial? Not on the evidence of this game. There were no patterns of play from Spurs. They were timid in possession and chaotic at the back. They failed to perform the basics and they crumbled in the face of relentless pressing from Brentford, whose blend of power, speed and skill revealed a team determined to kick on in their second season under Keith Andrews.

Compliments mean little to West Ham at this stage of the season. They need points more than a patronising pat on the head for playing quite well in a defeat. Positives? West Ham hit the woodwork three times, created a host of chances and contributed to an entertaining game. Negatives? Well, all of that would have been fine if they were coasting in mid-table, but given West Ham’s perilous position the overriding sense was this was a costly afternoon in their battle to stay up.

The frustration lay in blowing an opportunity to make 18th-placed Tottenham squirm before facing Aston Villa on Sunday evening. The gap remains at two points when it could have been five.