TOTTENHAM GET BATTERED EVERYWHERE THEY GO
West Ham 3 Liverpool 2
Tottenham get battered, everywhere they go. Tottenham get battered everywhere they go. Everywhere they go. The Liverpool fixture, not for the first time, is the Remembrance Sunday match. Trevor Brooking has agreed to read the Flanders Fields poem before kick off this afternoon, and he makes a decent fist of it. Alisson, however, inexplicably fists Fornals’ fourth minute corner behind him into his own net.
Moyes starts the game with his top PL XI, preferring Johnson to Coufal, and the early goal, whilst not a complete surprise, is well received, especially after Alisson’s injury time headed goal winner last season against West Bromwich Albion which took Liverpool above West Ham at the end of 2020-21. This was despite the Reds coming off the back of a run of five successive home defeats. So this might be the return of those three points, an event that would take West Ham above Liverpool into third place in the Premier League, level with Manchester City. But as only five minutes have elapsed in this game so far, perhaps it’s unwise to appear premature.
And so it proves, as Liverpool demonstrate exactly how well they have started this season, aided by an injury to Angelo Ogbonna that sees him replaced by Craig Dawson after just 22 minutes. Mo Salah, Sadio Mané and Trent Alexander-Arnold, are all playing a neat one touch football that threatens to penetrate the Hammers’ defence on more than one occasion in the first half. Fabianski is busy, but equal to everything that is thrown at him in the first half hour. And then the free kick. Saleh wins it at the end of the first half with some trickery that flat foots Declan Rice, and from the kick, Salah engineers the chance for Alexander-Arnold to volley home spectacularly from twenty yards. Despite the sublime quality of the goal, it is Liverpool’s first strike on target in the half.
Emboldened by their domination, Liverpool play the high line in the second half, and Hammers catch them on the break with Dawson heading against the bar from a corner and then when Bowen finds Fornals with a brilliant through pass that the Spaniard tucks surgically beyond Alisson’s flailing fist. I’d always thought this might be a tight game, but Liverpool continue to play high, and from a resulting breakaway, Bowen’s deep corner to the far post is met powerfully by the jumping Kurt Zouma’s head. Despite waving another outstretched fist, Alisson is beaten for the third time. West Ham have sixteen minutes to hang on, and bring on Vladimir Coufal for Jarrod Bowen to make their intentions clear. Liverpool also respond in an attacking response by bringing on Origi for Jota, and the Belgian rewards Klopp’s klippeting with a decent strike from the edge of the box to close the gap to just one goal. Hammers nevertheless hold out firmly in defence thanks to the final substitution with Masuaku on for Benrahma.
This is Liverpool’s first defeat in the league since March 2021, and The Klapp bemoans the Alisson goal not being disallowed, and Aaron Cresswell not being sent off for a foul that he wasn’t even booked for. Both decisions were made after VAR study, so you’d probably conclude, not unreasonably, ‘bad sport.’
1 Lucasz Fabiański, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 4 Kurt Zouma, 31 Ben Johnson, 41 Declan Rice (c), 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 28 Tomas Souček,, 8 Pablo Fornals, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 22 Saïd Benrahma
Substitutes: 15 Craig Dawson, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 26 Arthur Masuaku
Goalscorers: Alisson own goal, Pablo Fornals, Kurt Zouma
