Liverpool v West Ham – Match Preview

There’s a real danger that Monday night’s game with West Ham will be a pretty drab affair.  Despite Man City’s dramatic defeat today, we trail them by six points and Spurs are even further ahead of us after surprisingly beating Arsenal and Chelsea in the space of a few days.  Any slim hope we had of somehow nicking fourth place disappeared with what was left of John Terry’s reputation as Spurs threw a giant spanner in the works of Chelsea’s title challenge.

Harry Redknapp’s side need only two more wins to ensure they finish higher than us, and that’s assuming we win all of our games, which let’s face it, is a pretty big assumption.  After the visit of West Ham, we only have three more games to go, which given how the season has gone is probably a blessing.

A couple of weeks ago this looked like an easy fixture.  Now I’m not so sure.  The Hammers were in big trouble, and Zola seemed on the verge of quitting.  He came back from the brink, decided not to go, and since then his players have responded well.  There’s been a renewed sense of commitment and fight from West Ham in recent weeks, typified by the dramatic comeback against the blues when they recovered from a late goal to grab a point deep into stoppage time.  Thank fuck they did, or we’d be level on points with Everton after their win at Blackburn today.  They followed that up with a win at home to Sunderland last weekend, and they won’t come here and lie down that’s for sure.

But what of ourselves?  How up for this game will we be?  The focus will be on the Europa League semi, and there’s every chance that we’ll be very flat, especially if as seems likely we will be without Fernando Torres.  Plus, it’s Monday night football, and that very rarely goes well for us.  We did beat Portsmouth last time we were on Monday night duty though, so that at least broke the hoodoo.

The absence of Scott Parker probably hurts West Ham as much as the loss of Torres affects us.  Parker has been terrific all season, the one shining light in a horrible campaign for Zola’s side.  He serves the second of a two game ban, but they did beat Sunderland without him and will have taken great heart from that.  I rate Carlton Cole too, but Kyrgiakos has done well in any physical encounter so this could be a good battle between them if the Greek keeps his place in the side.

With or without Torres, we should beat West Ham, but if he isn’t playing I think it will be a struggle.  At this stage, I’d be amazed if he did play, as clearly there’s an issue there with his knee and even if he gets the all clear, is Rafa really going to play him in what could be a fairly meaningless game for us when we have a trip to Atletico Madrid three days later?  That game in Europe clearly is the priority, so a place on the bench would appear to be the best Torres can hope for on Monday night.

That being the case, this might be very similar to the Fulham game.   The Hammers don’t defend as well as Roy Hodgson’s side however, and I can see us just edging them out in a very poor contest.  I’d like Dani Pacheco to be involved in this, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, he needs the experience and this is the perfect game to throw him in.  Secondly, it would give the crowd a lift.  It’s going to be very quiet inside Anfild on monday night, people are not going to be up for this one at all.  Throw in an exciting kid who people want to see given a chance, and it might just provide a bit of a spark and get people a bit more into it.  I expect  the bench is the best he can hope for, assuming he’s back in the country after yet again going away with the Spanish u18 side, but it would be nice if he got a start.

There are rumours that Agger is stranded in Denmark too, but there’s really no excuse for him missing the game as he could easily drive back here.

Team prediction:  Reina; Johnson, Carragher, Kyrgiakos, Agger/Insua;  Lucas, Gerrard; Maxi, Kuyt, Babel; Ngog:

Score prediction: 1-0 (Maxi)

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