Although West Ham’s record at Anfield is awful, the Hammers arrived on Merseyside last weekend in superb current form and, but for some profligate finishing, including from striker, Michail Antonio, they might even have headed back to east London with three points in their back pocket.
The Jamaica international spurned a decent chance in the first-half to beat Alisson Becker with a header, and though Jarrod Bowen equalised Mo Salah’s early penalty, Liverpool went on to win 3-1.
Former Reds striker, John Aldridge, believes that Antonio’s pre-match trash talking was as much to blame as anything else, as it would’ve given his old team the motivation to make him eat his words.
“You know what, I think we are going to finish higher than Liverpool this season. I’m putting it out there. I watched the game (Wolves 1-3 Liverpool) because it was before our game and Wolves could have run away with it. They had quite a few opportunities,” Antonio had said on The Footballers’ Football Podcast.
“We’ve got them this weekend and it’s a six-pointer. We’ve got them!”
That clearly riled Aldridge who has never been backwards in coming forwards with an opinion himself.
‘West Ham, or Michail Antonio in particular, also made the major error of giving the opposition a free team talk. You can’t be doing that,’ he wrote in his Liverpool ECHO column.
“I did think it was blown out of context a little bit but he’s left himself open there, very naïve to say that. You saw the response from Matip and van Dijk – they matched his battle and he’s a tank.”
Whether Antonio’s words can be passed off as ‘banter’ is irrelevant because if you’re going to put such opinions out there then you’ve got to be able to back them up.
As a more ‘traditional’ centre-forward, the Hammers front man might be a throw back but as he’s shown time and time again, he’s integral to what David Moyes wants to achieve.
Against the best in the business defensively, however, he’s still found wanting, and so might want to keep a lid on that big mouth of his in the future.