There goes the unbeaten run then. Avoiding defeat in this game would have broken a club record but we blew it. To David Moyes too. That leaves a sour taste in the mouth, not least because he's now lording it above us in the table for at least two weeks. The worst part is it was nothing more than we deserved as I thought this was shite.
Losing the unbeaten run is disappointing as it would have been nice to set the record. Losing this season's unbeaten league record doesn’t bother me so much though. We were the last unbeaten team in the league but I don't especially care about that. By that I mean this defeat doesn't hurt any more just because we can't go unbeaten. It did the last time it happened (at Watford two years ago) because there was a real chance of going through that season unbeaten.
That was never on the cards this time. I didn’t think any kind of ‘invincible’ season was possible as we could easily have lost to Brighton, Brentford and City already. We don’t have that same look that we had a couple of years ago. Not consistently anyway. At times this year we’ve looked as good as ever, but it’s been patchy.
In fact, if you take the Champions League results away we might be looking at this season much differently than we have been. We’ve played 11 games in the league and we’ve dropped points in five of them. As I say, it’s been patchy and some of these players really need to step up now as we've underperformed in too many games already.
Klopp’s biggest beef afterwards was the referee and VAR. Fuck that. We had much bigger problems than that here and quite honestly I didn’t like that being the focus of his post match summary.
There’s fuck all wrong with West Ham’s first goal. Any contact between Alisson and Ogbonna is initiated by Alisson. Ogbonna isn’t even looking at him. All he’s trying to do is jump at the near post and get a flick on the ball. He doesn’t back in, he isn't challenging the keeper, he just jumps straight up the air and then Alisson challenges him.
Klopp complained that Ogbonna's arm hits Alisson’s arm and that’s why he couldn’t punch the ball. What the fuck is Ogbonna meant to do then? Not try and win the header? Keep his arms by his side when he jumps? We have seen fouls given for similar incidents but that doesn’t mean they should be. It isn’t a foul and Alisson needs to do much better than that.
We’d actually started the game really well so that was a kick in the teeth. We’d been knocking it about well prior to that and Robbo had got into good crossing positions twice in the opening couple of minutes. The crosses came to nothing because he cut it back into an area where nobody was. That was a recurring theme throughout the game.
Robbo got lots of crosses in but only one found a team-mate (a lovely cushioned volley to Sadio who should have scored). Is that his fault, or is it a lack of movement from those in the box? It’s probably both, but most of the criticism coming Robbo’s way is over the top for me as West Ham usually had ten players in the box when he was trying to pick out a team-mate. A lot of it just comes down to luck really.
We responded well to the goal though and picked up where we had left off. At least we tried to, but it was very stop start as Ogbonna kept getting injured until he eventually went off with blood pouring from a head wound after a clash with Jota. We had all of the ball and the Hammers were happy to just sit in and didn’t even seem to have any interest in trying to counter attack. Other than looking to get Antonio away down our right hand side they showed no ambition.
The problem was we never really had them stretched at all. They were comfortable in that first half. Maybe it would have been different had Cresswell been sent off, but I found it ironic that Klopp was kicking off about that when al we’ve heard from him all season is how he doesn’t like playing against ten men. He said it after Chelsea. He said it twice after Atletico. He even said it after Pogba saw red when we were 5-0 up.
Now apparently we lost the game because Cresswell wasn’t sent off and because the ref didn’t disallow a perfectly legitimate goal. Fuck me. There have been times when I’ve really wanted Klopp to go after the officials and he’s said fuck all. Then he chooses THIS one to make his stand? Pick your battles better, Jurgen, because you’re on dodgy ground here. We lost this game because we were shite.
Of course Cresswell should have been sent off. That goes without saying really. You can’t tackle like that anymore. It isn’t even a debate. That’s just a definite red card because it ticks every box in what constitutes a sending off nowadays. Excessive force. Out of control. Endangering an opponent.
Doesn’t matter that he won the ball and that he bounced off the top of the ball into Hendo. Pogba did that against Keita and I’m yet to hear anybody say that wasn’t a red card. Not even United fans complained about it. This was a different type of tackle but not THAT different and the outcome was the same. In fact, the outcome here was probably worse. Pogba ended up a little bit over the ball and caught Naby’s shin. Cresswell is miles over it and actually ends up with both feet going into both of Hendo’s knees.
A still photo can often be misleading but even so, just fucking look at the kip of this…
I don’t blame Pawson too much for that as like I said after the Pogba one, refs tend to be cautious on these challenges because they assume that if its a bad one then VAR will flag it up for them. Pawson was probably waiting to see if he had to go to the screen to check it but the useless twat Atwell on VAR said it was fine. Apparently there was not enough force behind it to justify a red. Stupid cunt. Just because he didn’t have a 10 yard run up like Pogba doesn’t mean it wasn’t forceful.
So yeah, I’m annoyed that decision didn’t go the way it should, but the bottom line here is that we went in at half time level at 1-1. From that point we should go on to win the game but we didn’t. Why? Not because Cresswell escaped a red card. Not because West Ham’s opening goal wasn’t disallowed. But because we were fucking shit in that second half.
That’s the thing that bothers me about this game. I don’t give a fuck about the Cresswell decision because we didn’t take care of our own business. If we’d played well and been unlucky then you can point the finger at the officials, but that wasn’t the case.
It isn’t the officials’ fault that from three corners we conceded, two of them ended up in the net and on the other we were saved by the crossbar. It isn’t the officials’ fault that none of Fabinho, Ox or Robbo saw fit to take one for the team and bring down Bowen as he ran at our defence for the second goal. It’s not down the refs that we barely forced Fabianski into any action all day.
For all of the possession we had in the first half we barely threatened their goal and needed a stunning free-kick to get back on terms. I’m not even sure it was a free-kick either as Rice doesn’t make much of a challenge at all on Mo, who looked like he was just very clever in going between two players and then falling down.
Brilliant strike by Trent and not before time. Full disclosure, I didn’t want him taking that as I thought Mo should have been given a turn. It was fucking superb though wasn’t it? The strike is perfect but the way they shifted it to give Trent a better angle to go around the wall was great too.
So half time its all square and there was no reason to think we wouldn’t go on and win it. The problem was that West Ham seemed to be stung by the goal and in those last few minutes before the break they looked a completely different team. They’d sat in and just defended for the entirety of the half but as soon as we scored they flicked a switch and went toe to toe with us.
Ordinarily I’d be all in favour of that. If you want to open up against us, good luck. Usually that won’t end well for our opponents but Brentford and Brighton both had a go and got some joy. West Ham didn’t exactly do that, as their approach was still centred on set-pieces and counter attacks, but when they got the chance to get men forward on the break they took it.
It was end to end in that second half and the game was in the balance. Maybe if we’d gone 2-1 we’d have won comfortably. The next goal was going to be all important and they got it. Absolutely shite from our point of view as it was self inflicted.
Fabinho - who was off the pace all day - played a silly ball into Mané who had two players right up his arse. He should protect it a bit better. but he was put in a bad spot there by Fabinho. Worse was to follow as Bowen charged through the middle and nobody brought him down. That’s something that annoys the fuck out of me about us. We don’t do that, and it puts us at a disadvantage because all of our opponents do. And rightly so. Someone has to foul Bowen there.
And then after that Matip goes to the ball instead of staying with the runner. It’s an easy ball for Bowen and Fornals is clean through. It wasn’t a good finish as Alisson was able to get a hand to it, but it found its way in and we were behind. I’m not blaming Alisson for that, I thought he was unlucky and did well to get a hand on it. It could have gone anywhere after that but unfortunately it went in.
2-1 was bad but I still thought we’d come back. When we conceded a third though I knew we were fucked. That goal is criminal though, Yes, Alisson doesn’t cover himself in glory again, but what the fuck are the rest of them doing? Even as they were preparing to take that corner you almost knew what wads coming. Alisson was rattled after the first goal and he was pre-occupied with Antonio. Instead of dealing with the cross he’s worrying about not letting Antonio impede him and he’s too slow getting to the back post. Zouma arrives completely unmarked and just like that, game over.
We pulled one back with a fucking great finish by substitute Origi, and we should have equalised late on only for Sadio to completely fuck up his back post header from a Trent free-kick. So we could have got something from the game and if we had it wouldn’t have been undeserved on the balance of play, but West Ham will feel they were good value for the points because they carried out their gameplay just as they wanted. Keep Salah quiet and take advantage of set-pieces and counter attacks. They did that, so for me they deserved the points more than we did.
This wasn’t good enough on any level. With and without the ball we weren’t up to scratch and the defending of corners was a fucking embarrassment. Arsenal-like in fact.
This weakness from high balls and crosses needs stamping out now before it becomes a major problem. Brentford roughed us up with long ball stuff and now we have this. Antonio’s comments afterwards should seriously set alarm bells ringing with the coaching staff.
“Yeah, the whole plan was to stick it on the goalkeeper and just challenge basically. We saw that they’ve struggled with the ball coming in and all we have to do is keep the ball away from Virgil and it worked out for us today. We have to give it to the staff. They have a look at the weaknesses and strengths of what each team come up against and for different games, we cover different strategies. So today was definitely push straight on the ‘keeper and we go and challenge. I saw that no one marks me on the ‘keeper so I’m there to block the ‘keeper to make sure he can’t come out and catch it. We saw what happened today, goals.”
I’ll say it again because it needs repeating. They had three corners. Two of them ended in goals and the third saw Dawson head against the bar. It’s fucking shit and it’s not all down to Alisson either. He needs to do better but he also needed help that he didn’t get. Look at everyone standing still on that third goal. It’s shameful.
And another thing. There was an incident at the end of the first half when Antonio was sent clear behind Matip. Van Dijk should be on the cover but he makes absolutely NO ATTEMPT to get to Antonio or to force him wide. You have to run diagonally to cut off the angle and at least give Antonio something to think about, but instead he jogs in a straight line towards his own goal, basically taking himself out of the play completely.
Luckily Antonio stood on the ball and Trent was able to get back, but it was so baffling from Virgil that I had to screen record it to show you what I’m talking about. Just look at this, it’s fucking weird….
We were virtually unbeatable not so long ago and a big part of that was psychological. Not just our own psychology, but that of the opposition. Everyone was scared of us. It was that Mike Tyson in his prime fear factor where opponents would face us and they’d be like Frank Bruno walking to the ring crossing himself and saying his prayers.
They knew they couldn’t beat us because there was no real weakness to exploit. Teams were happy to keep the score down and if they got lucky and nicked some kind of a result, they’d thank their lucky stars. None of them really believed they’d get anything though.
Now they are believing. Now they’re thinking things like what Antonio said. They think they can get at us with aerial stuff and with counter attacks. Brighton didn’t take the aerial approach but they clearly had a plan and knew where the spaces were to hurt us. They exposed that area between Trent and the right sided centre back and they got in the spaces between our midfield and defence.
We look vulnerable at the moment and I’m not smart enough to know why that is. I can see the problems but I wouldn’t know how to fix them. Thankfully that isn’t my job. It’s Klopp and his staff that need to sort this out, but it’s also the players. They’re experienced enough to know what they should be doing and the fact is that there have been too many occasions this season they haven’t done it.
Mostly we’ve played well, but it hasn’t been consistent enough and without consistency you can’t win leagues. It’s early days and the damage that has been done so far is still fairly minimal. Chelsea and City will drop points too. They already have, and that will continue, so there’s no need for panic.
There is a need for serious self reflection though because what we’ve seen in the last couple of games isn’t good enough. You can have a Brentford, Brighton or West Ham type day and write it off as just one of those things. You can’t have that kind of day when you’re dropping points in other games.
We’ve failed to win five of the eleven league games we’ve played this season now and I have to wonder if what we’ve seen the last couple of weeks is a result of them smelling themselves a bit too much after Old Trafford. There was definitely a whiff of complacency about this, which is fucking crazy considering we knew West Ham would go above us with a win.
I hate losing before an international break because now virtually the whole squad will be away with their national sides. Ideally we’d want them here working on defending corners and stopping counter attacks for the next two weeks. In fact I’d have them doing triple fucking sessions.
There’s a danger of over-reacting to what has basically just been two disappointing league results back to back. Up until then everything was going according to plan. Losing at West Ham is something that can happen to anyone as they’re on a great run at the moment. Losing at West Ham after drawing at home to Brighton is where the issue is.
And that’s the thing. You can excuse any one off result, but unless you address it a bad result becomes a bad run and a bad run can ruin your ambitions really quickly. We went from top of the league to mid-table last season remember. I know there are a lot of extenuating circumstances for that and I’m not comparing that with our current situation. I’m just saying, you can’t keep being careless and making stupid mistakes.
I’m disappointed by the performance at West Ham but I’m not unduly worried about anything big picture wise. Klopp definitely needs to figure out why we’re leaking so many goals and sort that shit out, but I have no reason to think they won’t get it right.
That being said, we’ve got Arsenal next and I’m telling you if we don’t beat them my rage will know no fucking bounds. Very few things are less acceptable to me than not beating Arsenal as they’re a fucking joke. I don’t care that they’ve been on a better run of late, they’re still weak as fuck, both mentally and physically, and if we don’t beat them in two weeks then what the fuck are we even doing here?
Go out and fucking batter Arsenal and get this rig back on the road. We’re the best team in the country so start fucking showing it and don’t be showing opponents any sign of weakness. I don’t want us to concede another goal from a corner for at least six weeks just to fucking nip this in the bud before it becomes a thing.
Star man is no-one as I’m too pissed off to be giving anybody credit. In fact, fuck it, I’ll give it to Origi for his brilliant goal. The rest all must do better.
Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho (Minamino), Henderson, Oxlade-Chamberlain (Thiago); Salah, Jota (Origi), Mané:
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