The first West Ham game I ever attended was September 10th, 1994 at Anfield. Driving up to Liverpool from Caterham with my mate Derek and his now ex-wife Michelle, I remember him telling me not to expect anything good because West Ham hadn’t won there in over thirty years. At the time, that number didn’t seem so bad. Not to mention that West Ham wasn’t the Lightning rod of emotion for me that it is today. A few months earlier I was in Madison Square Garden watching the New York Rangers ice hockey team win their first Stanley Cup, the trophy for the champions in The National Hockey League, in 54 years. So the whole notion of waiting awhile for a good thing to happen wasn’t totally foreign.
We drew Liverpool that day, 0-0, and played much of the game with ten men. If I remember correctly it was Steve Lomas who was sent off, and the first song I ever took part in was the away section serenading the Anfield faithful with “and we’re better than you, ten men”. One line song. Easy to pick up. Bubbles took me a little longer.
Like most of us, I didn’t really expect to get anything out of today’s game. The fact we haven’t won there since two months before JFK was shot only skims the surface of our misery there. West Ham have played 56 competitive matches at Anfield and won only 3. In those 56 encounters Liverpool have out scored our boys 108 to 30. Last night I read that we have only scored 5 in our last 18 trips there. Then, to top it off, Jenkinson and Tomkins were unavailable due to injury, and Good Sakho wasn’t even on the bench due to fears over Senegal’s complaint to FIFA. Suffice it to say, of all the away grounds, Anfield is without a doubt the bane of our existence. Unfortunately, today was no different.
The starting formation was once again a head scratcher. If there is a viable reason for Nolan to play in back of Carroll with Downing out wide I’d beg someone to explain it to me. In my personal hot then cold then hot relationship with Big Sam, I started the game quite chilly.
There is a cliché in all of sports. You cannot teach speed. And Raheem Sterling has enough of it for at least two players. In the 6th minute, after an O’Brien cross failed to find Carroll in the box, Liverpool countered down the left. After beating Winston Reid, Sterling found Lallana who then passed to Markovic. In my minds eye, I saw an early goal that would be very tough to rally from. James Collins had other ideas and blocked Markovic’s first attempt before his second shot went wide. Minutes later Sterling took to the left flank again and passed to Lallana but his shot went over the bar.
The past few days have been flush with rumours regarding Enner Valencia. I have no idea if they are true or not. It would seem illogical that Jose Mourinho would pay a lot of money for a player like Valencia, who is more about potential than current form. At the same time, there have been times when you could see what Valencia is capable of. In the 12th minute, Song sent a ball through the Liverpool defense that Valencia should have done better with before Mignolet gathered. A few minutes later, Cresswell sent a ball down the left side that he couldn’t catch up to. Valencia and Carroll then combined and earned a free kick, but Valencia’s attempt went straight in the wall. I couldn’t help but wonder if Valencia needs Sakho to do what he does best.
Liverpool enjoyed a spell of pressure in the middle of the first half, even if the final product wasn’t there. In the 19th minute they countered off an ineffective West Ham corner, and again it was Sterling at the heart of it. After getting the ball off Song, he laid it off for Henderson. If he shot it to the left post, it would have been a goal. If he shot it to the right post, it would have been a goal. Thankfully for West Ham, he shot it right at Adrian and the game remained scoreless.
In the 24th minute West Ham were again lucky to find themselves still in a scoreless draw. Sterling combined with Coutinho on the top of the West Ham penalty area. After a short pass from Coutinho, Sterling sent him in on goal with a superb back heel pass but his low shot was stopped by Adrian. If this was a sign of things to come, the long wait for a win at Anfield would continue.
The debate on who should play up front for West Ham centers on Andy Carroll. Regardless of whether or not any of us think the Sakho-Valencia partnership is the way forward for us, when Andy Carroll is on the pitch and playing to his ability he is a force of nature. And a damned good footballer. His work rate cannot be questioned, nor can his commitment to help out on defense. And he changes the way defenders approach their job. In the 33rd minute, Emre Can put a ball out for no other reason than Carroll was near him. Carroll then put West Ham’s first shot on target when he gathered a deflected header from Collins and tried to direct the ball into the top corner. Without any pace on the shot Mignolet was able to get there without any difficulty. Maybe Carroll needs Sakho as well to do what he does best?
If we are frustrated when we see Downing being played wide to make room for Nolan, you have to wonder if Stuart himself is shaking his head. Maybe that contributed to Downing losing all sense of time and place in the one minute of added on time when he gave up the ball in our penalty area. After Sterling went down in the area from an O’Brien challenge, the crowd screamed for a penalty which they didn’t get. The ball rolled to Downing, and he appeared to try a back pass to Adrian. But Markovic easily intercepted it and had nobody between him and Adrian. Anfield groaned, and I dropped to my knees in thanks when his shot went wide.
Scoreless at halftime.
When I first read that Real Madrid were interested in Raheem Sterling I figured it was simply a matter of Real Madrid being interested in every talented player on the planet. But the more I watched today, the more I realized that the petulant child that he once was is transforming into a world class player. Early in the second half he nutmegged Reid not once, but twice in a matter of seconds before crossing to Moreno who mishit his attempted volley. A few minutes later he took a pass with his back to goal, turned, and started to run at Collins before firing a shot over the bar. Finally, in the 51st minute, the Sterling led pressure got its reward when he and Coutinho combined again. A deflection off Collins sent Sterling in on goal and the 20 year old man child cooly sent the ball over Adrian.
Liverpool 1, West Ham 0.
West Ham have responded well this season when falling behind. Sam Allardyce has often inserted players like Amalfitano to ramp up the offensive pressure and creativity. That is what was needed today. But with Amalfitano already on the pitch, it would have been normal to expect him to stay there. Instead, he was replaced by Mark Noble. Twitter went berserk, demanding Nolan to be the one taken off. Doing that would also, presumably, have placed Downing back on top of the diamond. That didn’t happen, and to my eyes the whole team look confused and disjointed.
The day took another turn for the worse in the 59th minute when Carroll hurt his ankle after a late challenge on Can, for which he saw a yellow card to go with his physical pain. He tried to play through it, but was replaced by Carlton Cole three minutes later. Cole’s first touch of the game was by far his best when he layed the ball off for Valencia, but his drive was right at Mignolet.
For the most part, that was the last point at which West Ham looked like they had any chance at getting something from the match. In the 65th minute Coutinho made the West Ham defense look like they were in slow motion, dancing around three of them before firing a low shot that Adrian stopped. Two minutes later, Jordan Henderson found himself open twenty yards from goal but his shot went wide. The final nail in the West Ham coffin came in the 68th minute when Daniel Sturridge replaced Markovic. You knew it. I knew it. I bet Sam knew it. He was going to score.
Which he did.
In the 80th minute, Coutinho continued with his excellent performance on the day by sliding a pass to Sturridge on the right hand side. At first it looked like he had no angle on which to shoot. And maybe he didn’t, and Adrian gifted him the near post. Whatever the reason, Sturridge fired a bullet past a diving Adrian to double Liverpool’s advantage and effectively kill off the game. The salt for our wounds was provided a few minutes later when Reid came off injured and West Ham, having used all three substitutions, finished the game it’s ten men.
Final score. Liverpool 2, West Ham 0.
I couldn’t help but look at my TV and think that somehow we missed an opportunity to at least have a go at ending the 52 year jinx at Anfield. When I was asked on Premier Punditry, a Canadian based podcast I appear on covering West Ham, what West Ham would have to do to win today, I said we would have to play like we are trying to win. At the risk of being called anti Sam, anti Nolan, or anti anything, I don’t think we did that. I mean, if I know a wine that I sell is incredibly popular and my customers love it, why would I stop selling it? Even the television crew questioned why Downing wasn’t being used in the position he has been so successful at. I wish there was an answer that I, or we, could understand and accept. At the end of the day, we didn’t give Liverpool the kind of challenge we are capable of, and for that reason we will continue to wait for the next victory at Anfield.