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MOTD: Liverpool 0-3 West Ham United
It’s rather ironic that just last weekend, Arsenal and Liverpool couldn’t put any goals past each other, but the same West Ham United team that lost to Bournemouth in their last match has shipped a combined five goals over these same two teams this season. In what has started as an odd year for West Ham, the club that has lost both of their home matches this season is now two for two on the road. Yet Slaven Bilic’s men have taken more than just the six points away from their opening games of the season.
Said Bilic of today’s win, per The Guardian: “It is three points but it is one of those games for the club and especially the fans when it is more than three points. 52 years without winning at this special kind of stadium and we did it in style. We didn’t nick it, it was a great performance in 90% of the aspects of the modern game. It was one of those victories that will be written about in books in years to come. You can’t ask for more than that.”
For Liverpool, the drilling comes with quite the opposite effect. Many of their wounds were self-inflicted and the tight defensive performances they have show throughout the first month of the new season went right out the window just two-and-a-half minutes in. Dimitri Payet was given far too much space to get a cross off down the right – all afternoon, the reliable defensive cover of Pedro Obiang, Cheikhou Kouyate and Mark Noble gave the twenty-eight-year-old and his opposite winger, Manuel Lanzini, ample freedom to roam – and Martin Skrtel’s headed clearance only reached as far as Aaron Cresswell on the edge of the area. Cresswell drilled a low ball across goal and Lanzini ghosted in for an easy tap-in.
Brendan Rodgers said, via Liverpool’s official website: “From that first period in the game, we never really got going.” Their defensive errors compounded and in the twenty-ninth minute, Dejan Lovren inexplicably allowed Lanzini to nip the ball out from under his feet near the corner flag and as the twenty-two-year-old drove into the box, confusion reigned amid Liverpool’s backline. Lanzini’s low cross pinged off multiple Liverpool defenders and eventually fell for Noble to finish from fifteen yards out.
Liverpool lacked creativity and spark going forward and despite multiple individual flashes of brilliance — Roberto Firmino’s thirty-yard blast squarely hit the left-hand post early on – The Reds lacked a key finishing touch. They have only notched two goals from their first four games of the season and Christian Benteke again cut an isolated figure up front. Rodgers’ move to a three-man defense in the second half did little to alter the proceedings.
Granted, the errors weren’t only on Liverpool’s part. Referee Kevin Friend gave Philippe Coutinho a rather soft second yellow card in the second half and while Liverpool rarely looked like getting on back today, Coutinho will be sourly missed in the home side’s meeting with Manchester United next weekend. A trigger-happy Friend also gave Noble a ridiculous sending off in the seventy-ninth minute but it did little to dampen West Ham’s mood, especially given Diafra Sakho’s low, near-post finish from the edge of the area in the ninety-first minute following Liverpool’s hesitance at the back.
The fact that West Ham became second highest scorers in the league so far and Liverpool remain joint lowest goes a long way to telling the story of one team that finished their chances and another that didn’t.
Homepage photo credit: Kevin Ruscoe, via Flickr