Kevin Nolan spots ‘carnage’ as West Ham United lose v Liverpool – ‘You don’t want to see that’
Kevin Nolan was sympathetic towards Jarell Quansah after he scored an own goal in Liverpool’s 5-1 win over West Ham United at Anfield on Wednesday night.
Julen Lopetegui’s side went ahead in the Carabao Cup tie with Wataru Endo’s attempted clearance from a corner rebounded off the 21-year-old centre-back and into Caoimhin Kelleher’s goal.
Diogo Jota managed to spare Quansah’s blushes a bit not long after when his header cancelled out the youngster’s own goal before the Reds went on to rout the Irons, who finished the game with 10 men thanks to Edson Alvarez’s red card.
Speaking at half-time, Liverpool-born ex-West Ham player and coach Nolan spoke about the incident and relayed just how gutted Quansah would have felt to score the own goal.
“It’s not one Quansah will want to see again,” said Nolan on Sky Sports Main Event (25 September, 08:51pm). “But it’s a great ball in by [Aaron] Cresswell and [Maximilian] Kilman manages to keep it alive and it causes a bit of carnage in there. Liverpool, with the desperation of trying to clear it, it just hits Quansah.
“The last thing this lad wants to see is the ball trickling into the back of his own net.
“It’s totally not his fault but the fact is you don’t want to see that. That’s another dagger in the back and you think, ‘oh god’.
“You can see there how gutted he is about it.”
West Ham force own goal with super set-piece play
It’s never nice for any player to score an own goal. However, Quansah can take comfort in the fact that it was West Ham’s very good attacking play that left him in a position to score the first own goal of his professional career.
Cresswell’s left-footed corner into the box was a beauty and it was headed well into the danger area by Kilman, who towered above the Liverpool defence.
Kilman’s knockdown then seemed to find an unmarked Edson Alvarez and while he took some time to get the ball out of his feet, he did very well to not get dispossessed straight away.
Endo then managed to get a foot in to win the ball but all he could do was cannon it off Quansah and into the back of the net.
Quansah’s a good young English defender, who we hope to see doing well for his country some day.
But West Ham forced that own goal and they should get credit for doing so.
In other West Ham news, the Irons were in talks to terminate a player’s contract who played against Liverpool on Wednesday.
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