‘He knows it’ – Danny Mills claims West Ham mainstay let teammates down v Liverpool
Danny Mills has claimed that Lukasz Fabianski let down his West Ham teammates against Liverpool on Monday night by making two uncharacteristic errors.
The Pole failed to keep out relatively tame efforts from Gini Wijnaldum and Mo Salah before Sadio Mane struck the knockout blow in a 3-2 win for the Reds.
And Mills believes that the veteran stopper will know he could have done more to ensure his side picked up an unlikely share of the spoils on Merseyside.
Speaking to Football Insider, he said: “The first goal he will be disappointed with, he got himself into a good position and he let it slip. Maybe he mistimed it slightly.
“The second one is a really bad error. Simple as that. He knows it, his teammates know it.
“It is tough as a goalkeeper, there is nowhere to hide when that happens.
“At the crucial time, it really lets Liverpool back into it. Their tails were then up and they put West Ham under constant pressure.”
Was Fabianski at fault on Monday night?
If we’re being completely honest here, yes.
Was he the sole reason for the Hammers’ defeat against the champions elect? Of course he wasn’t.
But should he have done more to prevent at least one of the goals he conceded? Yes, very probably.
Mo Salah’s effort in particular was an absolute howler.
The ball is struck with relatively little pace straight at Fabianski, and yet he allows it to squirm through his palms and into the back of the net.
Similarly, he got a big enough hand on Wijnaldum’s header to suggest that he should have been parrying it away to safety.
The only saving grace is that errors like this are something of a collector’s item for the Pole, who has made just 16 errors leading to goals in 233 Premier League appearances.
Bearing in mind two of them came at Anfield on Monday, you would back him to be back to his usual safe-as-houses self by the time the weekend rolls around.
In other West Ham news, Carlton Cole savages Hammers for not ‘pulling his weight’ v Liverpool.