Dean White

Tue 27 October 2020 10:06, UK

Liverpool may be second in the Premier League but they are there for the taking for West Ham on Saturday when David Moyes’ men travel to Merseyside.

Jurgen Klopp’s side strolled to the title last season but their start to this year’s campaign has hardly been straightforward with Liverpool suffering a humiliating 7-2 defeat to Aston Villa and making hard work of wins over Leeds and Sheffield United.

West Ham, on the other hand, have been securing shock result after shock result. The Irons opened their 2020/21 Premier League campaign with defeats to Newcastle and Arsenal but since then they have beaten Wolves and Leicester and earned impressive draws with Tottenham and Manchester City.

Hammers fans were dreading their side’s difficult run of games to kickstart the season but with a game against the reigning champions on the horizon, expectations are almost miraculously higher than everyone would have predicted them to be.

Liverpool are not invincible and that was proven by Leeds and Villa earlier in the season when the two teams, who’ve recently been in the Championship, scored 10 goals against Klopp’s defence.

How did they do it? They attacked Liverpool’s exposed right-flank.

Trent Alexander-Arnold is one of the best right-backs in the world and almost always plays very high up the pitch to help with the Reds’ high-press and play a key role in their attacking play.

However, that leaves Liverpool weak on the right-hand side of their defence.

According to WhoScored, 49 per cent of Leeds’ attacking play went down their left-flank in order to expose Liverpool’s weakness on the right.

As you can see by the heatmap below, Leeds had more of their touches on the left-wing than they did on the right or in the central attacking area.

And the same goes for Aston Villa, who concentrated 41 per cent of their attacks to expose Liverpool’s right-hand side as they smashed in seven goals against Klopp’s men.

Leeds and Villa overloaded their left-wing and managed to decimate what everyone thought was one of the best defences in world football.

Liverpool had Virgil van Dijk in those matches but the Dutch centre-back will be missing for the Reds this weekend when they host West Ham, who specialise in attacking down the left-flank and could wreak havoc on Klopp’s defence.

With Arthur Masuaku playing as the left-sided wing-back and Aaron Cresswell playing as a left-sided centre-back who’s able to burst forward out of the back three, West Ham have started to overload the left-wing when they attack.

As shown by WhoScored, 39 per cent of West Ham’s attacks have been down the left this season. While that isn’t much of a difference between the two wings, they used the left-side more against Leicester (35%) and Tottenham (54%) and scored six goals in the process.

We’re not saying for one moment that just because West Ham are a side that likes to attack the left that they will stroll to victor against Liverpool.

Klopp’s one of the best managers in the world and he will know about the threat that the Irons carry. As a result, he may tell Alexander-Arnold to be less adventurous going forward in order to nullify the marauding Masuaku and Cresswell.

It’s going to be an interesting game and that side of the pitch is definitely an area to keep your eye on.

We’re sure that both managers will, at least.

In other West Ham news, Declan Rice was right to praise this team-mate for his display against Man City.