West Ham’s extraordinary odyssey continues unabated after their dizzying display against giants Liverpool as they are now finally able to sail totally free from the clutches of the abysmal Premier League depths that had earlier threatened to stifle them towards a horizon shimmering with the allure of Champions League glory as possible title challengers.
The huge win resonated with many impressive things going for it – from their now expected set-piece brilliance to the brilliantly-conceived and immaculately-strategised game plan that enabled them to insert a disruptive incendiary explosive device (aka IED) into the Liverpool machinery. There is also of course the presence in their ranks of Declan Rice, arguably England’s best, or at least certainly most in-form, player as he heads into the international break.
With these hugely positive plusses propping them up, West Ham comfortably moved up to third in the table, above their shell-shocked, disgruntled Anfield opponents and only three points off top spot.
Indubitably, all things are beginning to seem possible for the Hammers. And what’s most incredible in making the dream feel so wonderfully real is the realisation that West Ham are now playing so well that they have succeeded in turning the London Stadium – for all intents and purposes an athletics stadium – into an actual football ground with all the right ambience and atmospherics of one.
Understandably the starkly unfamiliar venue designed and constructed as an athletics stadium will never be a Goodison Park with its idiosyncratic rattle when being VAR-ed out of a penalty against a rival would resonate its own unique sound and feverish atmosphere that could never be replicated here in the athletics stadium. Ultimately, and fondly for all the right sentimental reasons, it’s how a stadium sounds in the most exciting, stressed out moments that define it.
As they shook their Anfield rivals who alas awoke way too late from their passiveness and lethargy, the Hammers and their fans amazingly created something extraordinary in this somehow still unloved London stadium that has yet to be accepted as a new sporting home. It is already a given that Liverpool, more appropriately Jurgen Klopp, will point defensively to the stats and say West Ham had few chances, that the Reds played much better for the better part of the match and blah-blah-blah…
For what it’s truly worth, West Ham did really great. The Hammers can proudly point to the chances they had being precisely the ones they were expecting to create and successfully convert, albeit unexpectedly aided and abetted by an out-of-sorts Alisson that even David Moyes’ meticulously-drilled Hammers couldn’t have hoped for at all. Nevertheless, sensing rightly that the German goalkeeper was off-beat, they honed in on him relentlessly.
After the match and the humbling, Klopp, in one of his rarer moments of self-denial, attempted to draw attention to two crucial moments early in the game. Ultimately both were straightforward decisions with the referee making correct judgments in both cases. For the first, the only mystery was why it took so long to establish that Alisson under pressure aided the ball into his own net without any provocation anyone else, least of all from their rival players around him.
The second crucial moment was in the VAR check to determine whether Aaron Cresswell should fittingly be flashed a red for tackling Jordan Henderson, which was again indisputable in proving his innocence as the former actually connected with a huge chunk of the ball which subsequently diverted his boot up into Henderson’s. There was clearly insufficient force and a total lack of recklessness in the challenge to render it menacing in any way. The Liverpool gaffer would definitely be better advised to focus on his team’s own shoddy mistakes and apathy in allowing their 25-game unbeaten run to come to such an uncharacteristic end.
The fault was inadvertently Liverpool’s for having been totally unprepared by West Ham’s potent set-piece threat, one of the division’s defining recurrent themes of recent weeks. Also noticeably all the time the game was still at 1-1, Klopp’s full-backs were very busily engaged in crossing the line over-enthusiastic in their zeal to attack and ended up recklessly out of position. The Hammers had issued sufficient warnings catch them way out of place on the counter numerous times before one actually came off thanks to a feeble attempt from Alisson to deny Pablo Fornals.
It was an infinite possibility that Liverpool could have snaggled a draw in a frenetic closing period, which would then have rendered it a non-scandal with the spoils shared. But, all said and done, Moyes and his Hammers certainly proved their worth and showed their mettle not to be messed with, not even by the gargantuan Merseysiders.
It certainly was a match and an outcome well worthy of West Ham seeking a serious title challenge, or even a tussle for a top-four spot. And certainly not least on a day when an uncompromising, unfamiliar athletics stadium was made to feel like a football ground closer to home.