Liverpool 1 West Ham 0
A blow that Paqueta missed this one with a shoulder injury and Moyes opted to go with Flynn Downes as a third holding midfielder. It began as the Darwin Nunez show, with the striker forcing a great save from Fabianski after he hit a stunning half-volley. Nunez then powerfully headed home Tsimikas's cross, forced another good save from Fabianski and then struck the post with another volley.
But shortly before the break the under-pressure Irons had a chance to come back into it. Downes' knock-on to Bowen saw the forward barged over by Gomez and after some VAR debate a penalty was awarded. Bowen never looked that confident taking it in front of the Kop and Alisson pulled off an athletic save. Not that bad a bad penalty, but perhaps we still need to get an assessment from the Office for Penalty-Taking Responsibility. Just after that Kehrer went close with a header from a corner.
After the break Liverpool had more chances and Zouma almost scored an own goal. But subs Benrahma and Antonio caused problems, and credit to Moyes for finally playing Michail and Scamacca together, albeit briefly.
Scamacca shot wastefully wide when set up by Antonio with Benrahma free in the middle. Benrahma didn't connect properly with his volley after Rice's dropping cross fell at his feet. Then after great work from Benrahma and Bowen on the left Soucek looked certain to score only to be robbed by a great tackle from James Milner and a deflection off Alisson.
In recent seasons we have perfected the art of losing unluckily at Anfield. At some stage we have to start taking our chances against the big teams away, although this was a decent performance and at times we had one of the best teams in Europe worried, while youngsters like Downes and Scamacca will have learned from playing here. Irons!
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