David Moyes is anticipating a tricky test for his West Ham United side at Anfield on Sunday.
The Hammers make the trip to face Liverpool this weekend in the Premier League and, while the manager knows there are no easy games, a visit to play Jürgen Klopp’s Reds will be a particularly tough challenge.
Like Sunday’s opponents, West Ham head into Sunday’s match on the back of an opening UEFA Europa League group stage win on Thursday. The Irons fought from behind to defeat FK TSC Bačka Topola at London Stadium while Liverpool also secured a comeback win, away to Austrian side LASK.
In fact, there are plenty of similarities between the Irons and the Reds already this season, with both enjoying excellent starts to the Premier League season.
Both have welcomed four new signings into their respective senior squads too, with Moyes praising Mohammed Kudus and James Ward-Prowse during his chat with the gathered media during Friday’s press conference…
FK TSC reflections
Waking up this morning, I didn’t have a different feeling about our performance against FK TSC. I’m really pleased we got the victory; it’s a good start to the group.
You play games in Europe and, quite often, the Premier League teams are favourites, but you can see that it doesn’t always work out that way. I’m happy we got off to a good start to the group though. We’ve got difficult games to come against Freiburg and Olympiacos so hopefully this winning start will help us qualify.
Summer signings stepping up
I’m really pleased that Mohammed Kudus has made a big contribution for us already. He’s still getting used to us and we’re still getting used to him, as we’ve said about a lot of our new players who have come to the Premier League. We’re going to give Mo the opportunity to settle in, but he made a good contribution on Thursday night.
James Ward-Prowse has also settled in incredibly well. I probably felt that he had the best chance of settling in quickly because of his Premier League experience. He captained Southampton for a long time and has been involved in England squads too, so I did expect him to settle in quicker.
We wanted to see if he could give us goals and assists, and he’s certainly done that. He’s started well for us and settled in great. He’s a bit of a Mark Noble-type player for us in terms of what he brings to the team and, as everybody knows, his deliveries are very effective.
A tough trip to Liverpool
Some teams have got ahead of Liverpool this season but Liverpool have pegged them back. Liverpool is always an incredibly difficult game. The crowd and the stadium always play a big part in trying to get a result at Anfield but I think, over recent seasons, we’ve tended to give them a good game.
We’ve tried to make it tough for them to get points from us, and we’ll try to give them another good game on Sunday. We know we’re playing against a really good side and we have to go and show what we can do.
Liverpool can challenge for the title this year. People say we’ve made a good start to the season but Liverpool have won all their games but one so far. Overall, they’ve had a good start. They are also introducing new players into their squad like us. From a distance though, it looks like Liverpool are starting to get into their best form.
Improvements in possession
I’ve said in a lot of press conferences recently that we want to get more possession and we want more of the ball. They’ll be some games where it’s harder to have it and some games where we get it, and FK TSC was one of the games where we had much more of it.
But then we have to learn how we turn that into opportunities and chances, and scoring goals. I don’t think we did it well enough at times on Thursday. It’s a part of the game that we’re trying to improve on. Winning is the really important thing though and, in a lot of games, we’ve not had a lot of possession but we’ve won them.
