Aaron Cresswell believes West Ham United can count themselves unlucky not to have taken all three points against Liverpool in Monday’s Premier League fixture.
Michail Antonio’s cool finish from a well-worked set-piece cancelled out Sadio Mane’s opener for the Reds in a thrilling tie at London Stadium; a match in which West Ham went close to a second through Declan Rice, Mark Noble, Felipe Anderson and Cresswell himself.
The defender knows Liverpool have proven themselves one of the division’s top teams, with Jurgen Klopp’s outfit chasing the Premier League title, but Cresswell reckons West Ham’s own big-team mentality gave the Irons the confidence to take a point from the Reds, albeit the No3 feels it could have been three.
We’ve said in the dressing room why can’t we play like that all the time? We did well. We fully deserved the point and could have got more.
Aaron Cresswell
“Liverpool are chasing for the title, but that’s not our concern and we didn’t look at that,” Cresswell said. “We were just focused on our own game. We knew it would be tough over the 90 minutes, but on another night, we could have won the game.
“We were really dangerous from set plays. Dec had a great chance from one. Felipe’s put a couple of great balls in, and on another day, we could have had more. You look at the number of clean sheets that they’ve had and we knew it was going to be tough [to score].
“We’ve said in the dressing room why can’t we play like that all the time? We need to be a big team before we step up to the plate. We did well. We fully deserved the point and could have got more.”
With a tricky test away to Crystal Palace set for Saturday, Cresswell has called on the Hammers to show consistency and take their good performance from Monday into this weekend’s trip to Selhurst Park.
The Irons ended a run of three straight defeats with the draw against the current Premier League leaders, and Cresswell believes West Ham have all the capabilities of finishing the season in the top eight.
He continued: “Consistency over the 38 games is key. We lost the first four games of the season, and of late we haven’t had some good results, but we need to turn it around now and look forward.
“You look at the stadium, and there’s 60,000 fans here. We should be in the top eight. minimum. Over the course of the season you have ups and downs, but we want to finish strongly now over the rest of the season and hopefully push towards that top eight spot and see where it takes us.”