Reds burst the Hammers Carabao Cup bubbles
Liverpool 5 West Ham 1, 25th September 2024
LIVERPOOL 5 (Jota 25 and 49, Salah 74, Gakpo 90 and 90+3)
WEST HAM 1 (Quansah (own goal) 21)
Nine short months ago and almost exactly to the day, Liverpool defeated a woeful West Ham 5–1 in the Quarter-Final of this very competition before going all the way to Wembley and ascending the stairs to the Royal Box as champions and Jürgen Klopp’s final trophy as Reds manager. Could this evening’s 5–1 victory be a portent of things to come and in a twisted kind of symmetry, Arne Slot’s first trophy in charge of the Reds? A trip to the sing-song seaside city of Brighton and “Sussex by the Sea” beckons for Slot’s Liverpool in the 4th round, arguably one of the premier ties of the round, and should the Reds return from the south coast a month from now still in the Carabao League Cup and having accumulated significant points in both the Premier League (Wolves, Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Arsenal) and Champions League (Bologna and RB Leipzig), Arne Slot’s first season in charge could well turn from a very good start into a great one but time, as ever, will tell.
Returning to the present, West Ham shaded a dreadful first 45 minutes in which two scruffy efforts on goal resulted in a goal apiece for each team and a 1–1 half-time score from two much changed teams from their preferred Premier League starting XI’s. 16 changes total were made by both Arne Slot and his opposite number Julen Lopetegui and it showed in a stop/start mess of a first half transformed early in the second by the surging runs and growing performances of Curtis Jones and Cody Gakpo for the Reds and a West Ham team as a whole now trailing 2–1 and desperately shouting repeated penalty appeals against Liverpool’s number two Joe Gomez. As the appeals grew louder a third soon followed against the hapless and error prone Kostas Tsimikas but this was an unwanted hat-trick for the visiting “Hammers” desperate to claw their way back into a cup tie now dominated by the Reds and following Mo Salah’s almost obligatory goal on 74 minutes, the Egyptian King was crudely taken down by a snide and shitty late tackle from Edson Álvarez that ensured the Mexican saw red and the 10 man Hammers wilted to yet another 5–1 Anfield pounding.
Two late goals from Cody Gakpo were a deserved addition to his supreme all round performance and there were positives everywhere you looked last evening around these glorious fields of Anfield Road. Despite the own goal (not his fault) Jarell Quansah was his assured and calm self in the centre of defence and Conor Bradley ably deputised once more for Trent Alexander-Arnold at right back. Wataru Endō’s performance will be overlooked by most (but not by me), Darwin Núñez hassled and harried a slowly sinking West Ham rearguard and whilst Diogo Jota grabbed two opportunistic goals and Gakpo’s double sandwiched Salah’s game sealing goal with a quarter of an hour remaining, Federico Chiesa put another hour of game time under his belt in his race for full fitness and Alexis Mac Allister sparkled in a second half cameo from the substitutes bench.
All told, a perfect evening under the Anfield floodlights! A nap hand of goals, no injuries that I’m aware of, and skipper Virgil van Dijk alongside Trent Alexander-Arnold, Luis Díaz and Dominik Szoboszlai all had the night off.
Over to you, Boss.
Arne’s Afterword
“I constantly told you guys how many quality players we already had. I think you all knew and that’s also what we showed in the last weeks and today again that we have many quality players. What pleased me most was that even if a lot of new players come in they don’t come in and try to have a good individual performance. They try to work really hard for the team”.
“It’s again a difficult draw. I think almost all the teams that are still in are strong teams and you know if you want to win a trophy or win this cup then you will play against difficult opponents — which was West Ham tonight as well. I would’ve preferred to play at home because in our schedule it’s already so tight and so many games that you would prefer not to travel. If I’m correct Brighton is not next door — it’s quite a far away game, but it’s a quality team to face again”.
Thanks for reading. I often lament that despite my hundreds of articles here I rarely if ever make contact with genuine Liverpool fans so, if that is you, please say a hearty hello and, whilst you’re here, can I interest you in these spectacularly good self-published books on the Mighty Reds?
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.