Liverpool 2 West Ham 0 - Prem (Oct 29 2005)

[TLW]

LIVERPOOL 2 West Ham 0

Report by Dave Usher at Anfield

Scorer(s) - Xabi Alonso, Bolo Zenden Half Time - 1-0 Venue - Anfield Date - Sat 29 Oct 2005 Star Man - Luis Garcia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well that was a bit more like it. Goals in each half from Xabi Alonso and Bolo Zenden ensured that the reds recent bad run of form was brought to an abrupt halt, as West Ham were overcome with relative ease at Anfield.

It had been a bad few weeks for the European Champions, and London clubs in particular have given Rafa Benitez’s side major problems. It started with Chelsea of course, a defeat which is perhaps understandable, but further reversals against Fulham and Palace were unacceptable and had sent us into a mini crisis.

The press were revelling in it of course, and some of the stuff about Benitez in the national press this week was nothing short of disgraceful. Had West Ham managed to emulate the exploits of their London neighbours, Rafa would have copped for some serious shit stirring in the rags this week.

Thankfully that never looked like happening, as the Hammers posed little threat to Pepe Reina’s goal. The Spanish keeper kept his sixth clean sheet in nine league games, which is a pretty decent start to his Liverpool career by anyone’s standards. In fairness he’s had very little to do in most of those games, which is testimony to the good defending of those in front of him.

Unfortunately, on the occasions when the defence has been breached and we’ve conceded goals, it’s proved costly because we just aren’t putting them in at the other end. Scoring goals has been a huge problem this season, and even against the Hammers we wasted chances and weren’t as clinical as we could have been.

With the exception of Cisse the strikers aren’t scoring, and both goals against the Hammers came from midfielders. Encouragingly however, Fernando Morientes turned in his best display in a long time. He didn’t score, but at least he got involved and his work rate was fantastic.

Benitez had gone with two up front, which is something I really hope he persists with now. He also opted to use Gerrard on the right, and again I hope he sticks with that. There are many of us out there who believe that until a right sided player is brought in, the skipper should be asked to fill in there.

We can cope without him in the centre, as the partnership of Sissoko and Alonso is a well balanced one, and Hamann and Alonso has worked ok in the past as well. Gerrard’s pace, thrust and drive is best utilised on the right at this moment in time, and I was delighted when I saw the team Benitez had picked for this game.

It wasn’t too far off being the strongest side he could field. There are question marks about who should play left back, left wing and who should partner Cisse, but the rest of the side picks itself really.

For this game, Benitez gave Riise the nod at left back, he went for Garcia over the ‘tired’ Kewell and preferred Nando to Crouch alongside Cisse. All three did their chances of a regular place no harm with good performances. Garcia in particular was excellent. We know how infuriating he can be, but this wasn’t one of those days. He was rarely wasteful, he was very inventive and he worked extremely hard. When he plays like this he looks worth every penny of the £6m paid for him. Let’s hope he can make this the norm rather than the exception.

West Ham have been enjoying a good season, and have been scoring goals regularly. On paper they looked a tricky opponent, but they immediately handed the initiative to us by opting for just one up front. They’ve got some decent striking options available to them with Sheringham, Zamora and Alliadierre, but when you play one up front, and that ‘one’ is Marlon Harewood, then let’s face it, you aren’t going to pose much of a threat.

In a scrappy opening to the game, West Ham saw a fair bit of the ball but never looked like testing Reina. Not that Hislop had much to do either. The reds had a few decent openings early on but couldn’t work the keeper. Cisse blazed a shot wide after a swift counter attack, but set pieces once again looked our most likely source of a goal.

Aside from Garcia’s strike at St Andrews, every goal we’d scored in the league this season had been the result of some sort of set piece (or penalty). So it wasn’t too much of a surprised that a set piece played a part in Alonso opening the scoring in this game. The Hammers made hard work of clearing a corner, and Xabi – who was outstanding throughout – made space before driving the ball through a ruck of players and past an unsighted Hislop with the aid of a slight deflection.

The goal prompted a five minute spell of sustained pressure from the reds, but despite the increase in tempo Hislop was not called into serious action again before the break.

The second half continued the same way. Liverpool had a lot of the ball, Garcia’s skill and quick feet regularly threatened to unlock the visitors defence, but the second goal wouldn’t come. Hyypia had a shot cleared off the line following, yes, you guessed it, a set piece, and Morientes headed straight at the keeper from Finnan’s inviting cross.

Cisse continued to frustrate with his choice of final ball, but at least he was trying to play team-mates in rather than taking wild shots himself. It didn’t always work, but then as has been said before about Djibril, you have to accept his flaws in the hope that he’ll get you a goal. Cisse’s performance was no better or worse than most of his other games in my opinion. The difference is sometimes he scores and the rest of his performance is overlooked, but when he doesn’t score he gets criticised.

I heard a commentator say recently that if you’re going to pick Cisse, you just have to accept him warts and all, and that’s a pretty accurate summation of him I’d say. He’s worth a place because we have no-one else who offers the same goal threat, but Djibril is going to have to become a lot less erratic if he is to secure a place in Benitez’s long term thinking.

I must admit I was a bit surprised to see him brought off, as I’d just assumed it was a matter of time before Morientes was replaced by Crouch. The fact it was Zenden who was being brought on pissed me off too I admit. It looked like the old trusted tactic off taking off a striker and bringing on a midfielder to protect a 1-0 scoreline. A trusted tactic which has backfired on many an occasion I might add. Happily I was wrong, as the change actually helped our attacking play.

Garcia had been causing problems to the full backs, so I couldn’t see the logic in moving him inside, especially as Zenden has been poor on the wing thus far. Rafa got this one right though, as Garcia linked very well with Morientes, who seemed to step his game up a notch after Cisse’s departure.

Whatsmore, Bolo knuckled down to the job on the left flank and got involved immediately when he whipped in a fine cross which Luis got a good head on but couldn’t quite direct into the far corner. Garcia also brought a good save from Hislop after jinking his way around a couple of challenges and getting a good low shot in.

West Ham changed things around and introduced Alliadierre and Sheringham, but the Londoners couldn’t get anything going as Sissoko and Alonso seemed to break up every attack before it even started. The midfield duo worked tirelessly and kept winning the ball back either through strong challenges or good anticipation. Sissoko was a bit hot and cold and wasn’t at his best, but he did a good job for the side and helped Alonso win the midfield battle.

Their pressing even played a part in the second goal. Good pressure from the duo deep in the opposition half prevented the Hammers getting the ball away properly, and when Riise headed the ball back over the top Gabbidon couldn’t cut it out and Zenden finished brilliantly to claim his first goal for the club in front of the Kop. His celebration was a bit weird, and I’m not sure what that ear cupping was all about. Maybe he thought it was the away end, or maybe he was telling the Kop to raise the noise levels a bit, as let’s face it the atmosphere was awful, but more on that later.

That goal meant we could all breathe easily safe in the knowledge that we weren’t going to have to endure the tense finale’s that we’d had against Sunderland and Blackburn. Benitez decided to bring Morientes off in the last minute, perhaps to allow him the standing ovation his efforts deserved.

He’s had a bad time since joining the reds has Nando, but this was one of his better games. He showed some excellent touches and linked up well, especially with Gerrard and Garcia. More importantly, he worked his bollocks off chasing down defenders and trying to win the ball back. He needs goals to get his confidence back fully, and also to silence his critics, but performances like this won’t do any harm.

The same can be said of Crouch of course, although he didn’t have any time to make any impression in this game. Anderlecht would be an ideal game to bring him back into the side, but Benitez has the dilemma of whether to do that, or keep Morientes in to build up his fitness and hopefully his confidence too.

Kewell will also come back into contention for that one, but Garcia deserves to keep his place and hopefully Rafa will have another look at Gerrard on the right. I’d probably keep an unchanged line up for Anderlecht, but I guess it’s unlikely Rafa will.

It was vital we picked up maximum points against the Hammers, and to do it by keeping a clean sheet and scoring more than one goal will hopefully raise morale amongst the players. A look at the table shows that second place is there for the taking, although we look a long way short of being able to take it.

That’s what makes our summer transfer activity so frustrating. Arsenal are wobbling big time, as injuries are taking a very heavy toll on them. The mancs look very poor despite the quality they have up front. Something isn’t right there, and really we should be taking advantage of the troubles at Old Trafford and Highbury. Instead we’re languishing around in the bottom half.

We do have games in hand of course, but they have to be won and would you put any serious money on us being able to do that at the moment? We need re-enforcements, but they can’t arrive until January, so basically we need to make do with what we have until then. The team which started against West Ham should be good enough to comfortably beat three quarters of the Premiership, so Rafa needs to keep picking them whenever possible.

West Ham were poor on the day, but their support wasn’t. Whereas the Kop never even came close to getting going, the Hammers’ travelling support sang virtually non stop. Most amusing was the “has Wayne Rooney fucked your mum?” which was then followed by “has Wayne Rooney fucked your nan?” Makes a change from ‘sign on’ anyway. Funny thing was, I sat there thinking "there's probably someone in this ground sitting there thinking "yeah, he has, the fat bastard."

When the Anny Road taunted them with “You’ve never won fuck all” they responded with “We won the fucking world cup” which was a pretty good response to be fair. Definitely the best fans to visit Anfield so far, not that they have had much competition.

As for us, no doubt we’ll crank it up a notch for Tuesday’s European game. Hopefully the players will too, as although this performance was good in patches, there is still plenty of room for improvement.


Team: Reina; Finnan, Carragher, Hyypia, Riise; Gerrard, Sissoko, Alonso, Garcia; Cisse (Zenden), Morientes (Crouch):