West Ham 3 Liverpool 1 27th February 2011
This was a game that we really shouldn’t have lost, indeed never really looked like losing for the majority of it either, but we ended up losing it by quite some margin. As far as I can see West Ham got lucky on three occasions and each of them hit the back of the net.
Scott Parker’s goal surprised me the most as it looked as though he toe poked it but it went past Reina with consummate ease. I don’t even think that Pepe thought that there was much put on the shot which is why he didn’t move quicker to save it. I certainly didn’t expect to see it slide in.
The second goal that they scored seemed to come from nowhere as well and we really should have had it covered but there was a momentary lapse in conversation, Ba was unmarked at the far post, and the ball hit the back of the net for a second time.
Glen Johnson finally hit the back of the net for us in the 84th minute, but it was not for the want of trying, we had quite a number of shots but Robert Green had a good game and did a couple of top class saves, but he wasn’t able to stop Johnson’s shot.
The third goal that West Ham scored we could be said to have been at fault before as Martin Skrtel lost the ball to Carlton Cole who then ran rings around our defence and put the match well and truly beyond us with only a few minutes to go. Cole had only come on a few minutes previously and it may well have been his first touch of the game that took the ball from Skrtel but he did take the goal well, so there can’t be too many arguments on this one.
West Ham did not play like they were languishing at the bottom of the table but I still think that the end result was rather unfair on the performance that we gave.
In the end what West Ham did was stop us from playing to the best of our ability. Suarez was often ineffective in the game, but this was more down to West Ham’s defending that to a lack of effort on the Uruguayan’s part. However, he did manage to show flashes of brilliance on the odd occasion that he managed to lose his marker.
Sadly though in the end it doesn’t matter how much effort we put in during the game because the end result will always read as 3-1 to West Ham, but that doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story of the match.