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Work-rate. Incisiveness. Nous. I don't ask for much. This is how it's gonna be. Build from the ground up. Performances have been very much below par lately, with any enterprising play dying at the feet of a forward line that all appear to be out of form, not helped by a midfield that itself is a little out of sorts. I feel the defensive line has generally been very good since the last international break, but it's what is in front of them that is giving cause for concern. In open play, the decision-making has been so off that we have had to resort to getting goals from set-pieces or firing howitzers from long range. Both are things that a team that doesn't dominate possession can make hay from. We are dominating possession in games but doing very little with it. The sides last met at Anfield in this competition in January 1983. Liverpool won the match on their way to 3 in a row in the League Cup (then called the Milk Cup for sponsorship reasons). It finished 2-1 with David Hodgson and Souey getting goals either side of a Paul Allen equaliser. West Ham are a hard side to call, because there are still games where they are abject and get a real shoeing (see Fulham), and others where the likes of Bowen and Kudus give the impression they could go up a level. No idea if Moyes will come to Anfield and play his usual cautious game and hope to nick something, or if he will free his players to express themselves. For us, Jurgen needs the players to get out of this recent funk. While we have still managed to get results on the whole, there has been a lot of disjointed play and inconsistency in their performances. I think Jurgen will go with a stronger line-up than he fielded in Belgium last week, while still looking to rest one or two. Cody and Darwin badly need goals, and Lucho really needs to start looking like the dynamic threat he was pre-injury. This might be a game for Harvey to start. Whatever the selections, the motivation, concentration, attitude and application need to be absolutely on point from first minute to last. No excuses. Play for a place in the two-legged semis. Get it done!

A Saturday evening slot is better that being asked to play after City have played again. As it’s the Manc derby, it was always going to be scheduled as Sky’s big game of the weekend. Plus, we have a Champions League game on Tuesday so other than Saturday 3pm, 5:30pm is the best available slot scheduling-wise. One reason why City were able to build up a lead is that they were playing before us game after game so we were always playing catch-up. That was something we had to deal with in 2018/19 as well. That season we racked up a then-club record of 97 points and still fell short. Dickhead fans and bantz merchants revelled in the fact we “failed”, completely ignoring that our points total was more than enough to win the league every year bar that and the previous one, when financial doped FFP-floating UEFA-threatening City could do whatever they wanted. Anyway, West Ham then: Jizz-inducing football. Energy. Luck. Liveliness. Intensity. Effort. Drive. Exuberance. Electricity. Love of the game. Style. I don’t ask for much. Last season’s fixture saw the Reds bounce back from an early Fornals goal to claim the 3 points at Anfield. Mo got booted in the box far more firmly than Robbo on Welbeck in the Brighton game (though that didn’t stop the pundits cry-arsing about Mo supposedly being a diver), and he got up to convert the spot kick shortly before half time. As the game approached full time, Diogo ran through to slot the ball past Fabianski. He’d been denied a goal a bit earlier when VAR chalked it off for a foul by Sadio on the goalkeeper. October 1967 saw the Reds beat the Hammers 3-1. This was the West Ham side of Moore, Peters and Hurst so they had a smattering of quality, and had won both the FA Cup and the Cup-Winners’ Cup in previous seasons. League-wise they were still West Ham so never part of a title challenge. Two goals by Saint and one by the Anfield Iron put Liverpool in complete control, with West Ham’s Martin Peters grabbing a consolation. Can’t find footage or even a match report, so here’s the team line-ups from the matchday programme. https://www.lfchistory.net/images/programme.covers/1967-68/MatchProgramme_Lineups-1967-10-14-WestHam.jpeg Mid-October 1967 saw the box office dominated by the big screen portraying of America’s most famous Great Depression era criminal couple, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. It’s called Bonnie and Clyde, in case you hadn’t guessed. Arthur Penn directed this criminal caper which starred Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the titular couple. It laced humour with some startling brutality for its time (only Sam Peckinpah was as overt about depicting violence in his films back then), not least when showing the demise of the pair. Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers ramps things up a notch but you can see how Penn’s 1967 film influenced it. The film starred Gene Hackman as Clyde’s brother, and is notable also for being Gene Wilder’s film debut. It’s a very good film but, violence aside, very much of its late 60s era. Bonnie and Clyde, for all their obviously heinous crime, remain popular in much the same way as Tony Montana in Scarface. Protagonists that are arseholes. The West Ham game gives us the chance to close the points gap once more, even if only for 24 hours. Moyes has got them performing above expectations this season. It’s not so long ago when West Ham were staring relegation in the face. Covid hit and their owners were all about null and void to preserve their top flight status. They’ve done very well since then, and beat us earlier in the season when we were distinctly below par. Right that wrong, show the correct level of attitude and application, and just get the 3 points. Keep approaching every game like that, and see where it leaves us at the end of the season.