Secondary Scoring and West Ham Attacker Highlights Marquee Matchup

Both West Ham and Liverpool are limping heading into this match. One constant for the Hammers should highlight the offensive output and star in the marquee matchup.

As mentioned, both West Ham and Liverpool are coming into this match at far less than 100%. For Liverpool, a string of centre-back injuries now see them without Virgil Van Dijk, Joel Matip, and Fabinho who all picked up injuries in the past few weeks. This leaves them extremely thin and reliant on youngsters to fill in beside Joe Gomez.

West Ham is without their starting striker now, Michail Antonio, who has been confirmed out and possibly beyond by David Moyes in his pre-match press conference. There aren’t any other notable injuries for the Hammers, but this is a massive injury blow to the spearhead of this squad’s offence.

A few different starting XIs have been cooked up for this team without Antonio, and despite near-wholesale changes to the team, only one player is seemingly sticking in the attacking trio when West Ham clash with Liverpool, and that is Jarrod Bowen.

Many are calling for Sebastien Haller, Said Benrahma, Pablo Fornal, Manuel Lanzini, and even Andriy Yarmolenko for this match, all at the expense of each other. Jarrod Bowen, however, has remained in at right-wing or striker in most every assembled XI.

Working off of a Benrahma/Fornals left-wing and Haller striker front line, Bowen on the right-wing will have plenty of work to do to support Haller, trackback, and create on his own, all compounded by Andy Robertson lining up opposite him at left-back for the Reds.

Robertson is the better defending fullback of Liverpool’s elite set of wide defenders but still likes to get forward and be adventurous whenever the opportunity presents itself for him. Bowen can capitalize on this by playing off of Vladimir Coufal and beating Robertson once possession is turned over.

With Robertson’s propensity to get forward and impact the attack, Bowen will have miles put on him after this match simply from tracking the deeper runs from the fullback. This will obviously pull him deeper and make the opportunities to expose Robertson fewer and far between, however with help from Coufal, Bowen can hopefully be sprung a few times to instigate the attack from wide.

Far from a deciding player battle for the entire match, West Ham are being forced through injury to rely on secondary scoring and Liverpool are being forced to lean on their veteran fullbacks to help bail out their shallow defensive core. While neither are make-or-break positions, they could help dictate the game flow and factor into which team gets the win.