Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
Liverpool will still be reeling from that sensational defeat to Bournemouth last weekend in which twice they gave away a 2 goal lead to end up losing 4-3 at The Vitality Stadium. That defeat now sees Chelsea open up a 4 point gap at the top of the table and you may well question how crucial that defeat on the South Coast will be come the end of the season.
This afternoon they will look to bounce back to winning ways as they play host to a West Ham side who will want to forget a defeat of their own from last weekend. They were hit by a five star Arsenal as Alexis Sanchez ran riot at The London Stadium on his way to a sensational hat-trick.
That defeat led the club owners David Gold and David Sullivan to give manager Slaven Bilic the dreaded vote of confidence and with the club starting the weekend in 17th place there is every chance that they could be in the drop zone by the time this game kicks off.
Injuries have been one of the key factors for West Ham this season. All clubs will have their own injury crisis over the course of the season but for The Hammers it looks like a crisis that has been in place since the start of the season with no sign of letting up anytime soon.
How much of that is bad luck and how much of that is down to poor preparation at the club can be argued but the one thing that is for certain is that it’s having a huge detrimental effect on the club’s results. Early in the season the new stadium was being used as an excuse for bad results but now in the cold light of day you just have to say that West Ham are playing way below par.
With just three weeks before the transfer window reopens then if the club owners really do have confidence in Slaven Bilic then they will back him in the transfer market but until then this West Ham side will have to limp along and it doesn’t get much trickier than a trip to Anfield.
Jurgen Klopp will probably still be asking himself how his side scored three times on Sunday and still ending up losing. A couple of things that you could point to, firstly they certainly weren’t the same side once Sadio Mane came off through injury and secondly Loris Karius.
Karius arguably should have done a lot better with Bournemouth’s second goal but he was definitely at fault for Bournemouth’s winner when he parried Steve Cook’s shot right into the path of Nathan Ake. That was the simplest goal that the on loan Chelsea player was ever going to score as The Cherries comeback was complete.
The question now for Jurgen Klopp is whether or not he perseveres with Karius in goal or decides to recall Simon Mignolet. Part of me think’s Karius should be dropped but then the other part thinks that confidence needs to be shown in Karius after that shaky performance. Thankfully I don’t have to make that decision.
But what I do know for sure is that I can’t see Liverpool dropping points in two successive Sundays. Even more than that I can’t see anything other than a Liverpool win. They will just have to hope that West Brom do them a favour a couple of hours before but that may be wishful thinking. A home win for me.
