West Ham beat Liverpool, as Upton Park rejoiced in the return of Dimitri Payet.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law, but it won’t win football matches on its own, as Liverpool found out at the Boleyn Ground. Completing a league double over their Merseyside prey, West Ham comfortably beat Liverpool with a display of fine chance-taking and stout defending. The home side were far more barbed in attack than their opponents; a team-wide counter-attacking threat, with multiple methods of harm, be it the pace and directness of Enner Valencia and Michail Antonio, or the aerial authority of Andy Carroll. Liverpool were toothless in comparison, registering just two shots on target to West Ham’s ten. Christian Benteke again toiled to no avail, and Roberto Firmino continues to frustrate, turning in another oddly ineffective performance.
2 – West Ham have secured a league (home/away) double over Liverpool for the first time since 1963-64. Hammered.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 2, 2016
Liverpool’s aerial deficiencies swayed Bilic enough to include Carroll from the start, despite the striker’s talents as a late-game impact substitute. Lanzini was welcomed back into the starting line up, playing alongside Enner Valencia. A midfield trio of Noble, Kouyate and Antonio had no shortage of grit and muscle, and Aaron Cresswell returned from injury, replacing Carl Jenkinson. This, of course, was all secondary to the news that Dimitri Payet had been deemed fit enough to take a spot on the bench. Bilic was visibly cautious speaking about his star midfielder before the game. “Payet is in a situation, let’s say, like Lanzini was for the game against Southampton so, of course, he’s on the bench and… probably he’ll come on… It was definitely too early for him to start but he looks good, he looks sharp, the injury is history *Bilic then raps his knuckles on his skull* and of course it’s a big, huge boost for us.”
Jurgen Klopp was cautious when he spoke about his own injured star, Daniel Sturridge. “Daniel is training, some days it’s better, some days it’s worse.” Klopp also assured the public that Benteke’s place in the line up had little to do with the fact that Divock Origi was also injured, as well as Sturridge. Liverpool started Jordan Ibe in attack, and were relatively threadbare themselves, with James Milner, Jordan Henderson and Martin Skrtl all missing. Lucas Leiva and Emre Can made up the midfield base, and Dejan Lovren was tasked with the worrying job of marshaling Andy Carroll, as task that he, let’s say, did not earn top marks for.
Antonio’s athleticism better as a supplementary, rather than primary, asset.
Michail Antonio has enjoyed an extended run in the team lately and, save the goal he scored by placing his head in front of a turf-level Victor Wanyama clearance last week, he’s done little to indicate he’s capable of carrying a genuine threat as a key attacker. His approach has been rudimentary, unsubtle, more blunder than twinkle. He is, however, an extraordinary athlete, and his role here sought to utilise that. Deployed as part of midfield three, Antonio wasn’t required to run a wing on his own. With a more general midfield-rover brief, he was everywhere in the first half. Antonio’s slide tackle in his own right-sided defensive corner, resulted in a West Ham break led by Cheikhou Kouyate. Antonio then scored from the counter-attack he began, on the left side of Liverpool’s penalty area.
There’s lung-busting, and then there’s lung-busting, and Antonio’s run was very much in the latter category. He later bombed in a long throw that careered further than Phillipe Coutinho’s first corner kick had. Although athleticism is an asset that, on its own, can’t change a match, it is still an asset. The mark of a good manager is one who identifies his players’ best attributes, and then utilises those players in a manner that accentuates their virtues. Bilic did this here, and Antonio flourished.
Benteke’s lack of runners cuts his value in half.
Christian Benteke was nearly invisible in the first half, every touch was bathed in a pallid wash of the ineffectual, every run appeared to fade into transparency. He was put through by a James Collins mistake in the first half, and dithered badly, allowing Tomkins to scythe in and clean up. Up the other end, Andy Carroll was far more present, winning a great number of headers in the first half, and scoring a thumping forehead-based goal early in the second. Benteke is as good in the air as Carroll, and far better on the ground.
But Carroll was surrounded by three fine runners in Valencia, and the surging Kouyate and Antonio. All of the long passes aimed at Carroll were meant to be cushioned down for these runners, and in Firmino, Coutinho and Ibe, Benteke had none of his own. Ibe is certainly capable of scorching people for pace, but he was working out on the touchline, away from Benteke. Firmino and Coutinho are wholly to-feet players, who gravitate toward that sphere in question, not into areas where it may go. Isolation breeds despondence, and Benteke wore a hangdog look for much of this match. If you don’t provide the right, willing players around him, to profit from his aerial prowess, you’ve neutered half of his value as a player. Although Klopp assured us in his pre-match interview that Benteke wasn’t just his starting-striker-by-default, the Belgian doesn’t look at all comfortable in Klopp’s system.
Pondering Klopp’s strange substitutions.
With Liverpool 2-0 down, and with ten minutes to go, Jurgen Klopp took off Mamadou Sakho, his centre back. Perhaps a change to three at the back was imminent, with another attacker inserted to apply some final pressure? Evidently not, because Joe Allen came on for Sakho, and Lucas Leiva appeared to slide back into the position vacated by Frenchman, with Allen playing in Leiva’s place as a central midfielder. Sakho had been playing well, at least, as well as any other Liverpool player. Joe Allen, just as poor a chance-taker as Leiva, spurned an open header at the death, which would have at least cranked up the pressure for West Ham during the last few minutes.
This substitution, along with the also slightly odd like-for-like replacement of Alberto Moreno for Australian youngster Brad Smith, made Klopp’s decisions here mystifying in the extreme. Smith was lively admittedly, but Moreno had been too. To take it as a sort of public message from Klopp to the powers that be, communicating the paucity of his squad would be a step too far, but there is little else to explain it.
Bilic’s holistic game-plan nullified Liverpool perfectly.
By deploying Noble, Kouyate and Antonio, then later Pedro Obiang, Bilic had clearly anticipated Liverpool’s use of multiple ball-playing attackers. Firmino and Coutinho were surrounded, and with Ibe marginalised on the wing, and Can and Leiva somewhat limited in their attacking skills, it’s no wonder Liverpool rarely threatened. Noble, Obiang and Kouyate spent 20% of their time in the exact area that Liverpool’s twin No. 10’s like to work, harrying and hustling all match; Noble in particular was superb in this regard. With only Ibe streaking into areas out wide, it was easy to deal with the Liverpool attack with so many West Ham tacklers in this crucial central corridor.
Additionally, Carroll’s presence, while clearly used to take advantage of Liverpool’s well-known weaknesses in the air, was also a vital relief valve for Bilic’s midfield. The full-backs Aaron Cresswell and James Tomkins are two fine long-range passers, and Carroll was continually used as a target by them, removing taxing ball-playing duties from a Hammers midfield tired from all of their defensive work. Carroll had his way with the Liverpool defence all match, often making direct strides to pin himself to Nathaniel Clyne, and with Valencia always looking to prey on knockdowns, there was little doubling-up Liverpool could do on the towering Geordie. James Collins was again superb in his own back-to-the-wall way of doing things, and Adrian completed with ease the few arduous saves he had to. It was, all in all, a fine, considered, pitch-wide plan that came together perfectly.
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