Premier League preview: Liverpool v West Ham
Volcanoes in Iceland have received a better press than Rafael Benitez recently, as the Liverpool manager has overseen a struggle for league form and consistency that has all but cost his team the chance to play Champions League football next season. That’s if it is still his team next season.
Mark Lawrenson is just the latest former Reds player to criticise the Spanish boss for his failure to provide a firm denial of the recent speculation linking him with the Juventus job, not that the attack made many headlines after a few more eventful days at Liverpool Football Club, Merseyside’s best soap opera since Brookside.
Friday’s joy at the announcement that the club is officially up for sale – something that they’ve effectively been ever since Tom Hicks and George Gillett sweet talked the Royal Bank of Scotland into giving them over £200million to buy it in early 2007 – was offset by last night’s news about Fernando Torres.
The Spanish striker won’t play for the Reds again this season following yesterday’s knee surgery, meaning that the goalscoring burden will have to be passed on again, largely to a 21-year-old Frenchman who has divided opinion throughout the campaign.
David Ngog has both benefitted and suffered from being at the same club as Torres. He’ll have learned from him in training on a daily basis, and that experience should be invaluable to any young forward, but when Torres isn’t available then great expectations are placed upon him. He’s not Torres – few could dream to be – but that doesn’t mean that the pressure is any less intense.
In a perfect world, a club of Liverpool’s stature shouldn’t have to be relying on a striker who signed for £1.5million as a 19-year-old in July 2008, but needs must.
Ngog has improved throughout the campaign, despite the difficulties faced by a young forward coming into a struggling side, and he’ll be relied upon to find the net both tonight and in the remainder of the campaign. Liverpool need a striker to find form, and tonight’s opponents have got one of them.
Ilan Araújo Dall’Igna isn’t a name that would have been familiar to West Ham fans at the start of the season, but the forward appears to be on a one-man campaign to keep their side in the Premier League.
The Brazilian’s two goals in the Hammers’ last two games have earned his side four precious points in the battle to stay up, and with West Ham now three points and one place above the drop zone, manager Gianfranco Zola has confirmed that Ilan – a former Sochaux and Saint-Étienne striker, and three times a Brazil international – will start tonight.
It was Ilan’s stunning late header on their last visit to Merseyside that earned the Hammers a 2-2 draw at Everton two weeks ago, ending a dismal run of six straight defeats and providing the platform for the crucial 1-0 win over Sunderland last time out.
They’ll head to Anfield buoyed by that – with Gianfranco Zola already exclaiming his joy that the pressure is on his opposite number for once tonight – but it could be a nervy evening for both clubs and their bosses.
Due to the ongoing flight ban, Liverpool are reportedly preparing a gruelling 2,600-mile coach journey to Madrid for their Europa League semi-final clash with Atlético on Thursday, and if that is how they are to travel, they’ll have to set off pretty soon after the final whistle tonight.
Anything other than a victory, and the trip will seem twice as long.
Prediction: Liverpool 2 West Ham 1
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