Liverpool earned three points from a difficult game at West Ham, where they had fallen behind early on. Lucas Paqueta scored following a brilliant Hammers move to put the hosts ahead after 12 minutes, only for Cody Gakpo to draw from distance soon after. In the first half, Diogo Jota squandered two golden chances to put Liverpool ahead, before Jarrod Bowen had a goal ruled out by VAR for the hosts.
Matip then scored the game-winning goal with a wonderful header from Andy Robertson’s corner, despite West Ham’s late appeal for a penalty for what they viewed as a handball against Thiago Alcantara. With the ship seeming steady now, after three wins in a row, Jurgen Klopp still denied to be dragged into the top-four race, where Liverpool currently trail fourth placed Man United by six points, with having played two games more.
Klopp rules out Champions League football for Liverpool next season
This was Liverpool’s third win in a row, and they’ve come a long way since their problems in the first 35 minutes or so against Arsenal earlier this month. Klopp’s team has recently defeated Leeds and Nottingham Forest, while picking up draws against Arsenal and Chelsea. However, the odds still suggest that their recent, mini-positive run of results is not enough to secure a place in the Champions League.
But they’re winning games they weren’t earlier in the season, with Klopp content with the fact, at least or now. Liverpool are now only six points behind the top four, but Manchester United and Newcastle both have games in hand, and Klopp is hesitant to put his team in contention just yet. When questioned about a sprint to the finish line and the potential of securing elite European football for 2023-24, Klopp told reporters:
“I can’t see the race yet, I can’t. That’s because we are not in the position for a race. So the only thing we can do is keep winning football games. If that puts pressure on other teams, that’s not in our hands because we don’t play them. We play Tottenham – that’s it from that area, I think, of teams above us. If they win all their games, that’s it for us.
“But I don’t think about that. I want us to finish the season as good as somehow possible. I want to take something out of the season for next year. If that is European competition, great. If not, we have to accept it as well and go from there. That’s what I want now.
“I want us, at least for a few weeks, [to] show our real face – and not the nice one, the ugly one, the nice one, the ugly one. It’s really tough to do that. So now we did it for kind of three games – three-and-a-half, the second half against Arsenal was brilliant as well – all in a different way.
“Tonight, the first half I liked the most for a long, long time, like the way we controlled the game. We played here plenty of times, it’s always tough. Result-wise, it looked better from time to time but the goals we scored were then counter-attacks, stuff like that, quick reacting, all these kind of things. Tonight we controlled the game in a way we never did before against West Ham and I really liked that.”
The result put Liverpool above Tottenham, whom they welcome at Anfield on Sunday, while keeping their faint prospects of finishing in the top four alive. Manchester United lead the Reds by six points but have two games in hand, one of which is against Tottenham on Thursday night.