Head Coach Julen Lopetegui admitted Premier League leaders Liverpool had been too good for his West Ham United side after the Reds won 5-0 at London Stadium on Sunday.
Arne Slot’s side gave absolutely no gifts four days after Christmas, as Luis Díaz, Cody Gakpo, Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Diogo Jota all found the net on a night to forget for Lopetegui and his Hammers.
Mohammed Kudus did hit the inside of a post with Liverpool leading by just a single goal but, if truth be told, the visitors produced a performance worthy of their victory, forcing Alphonse Areola into making eight saves and going close on at least half-a-dozen other occasions.
West Ham had fleeting moments, but they were too few and too far between to seriously trouble the best team in the country, with substitute Luis Guilherme’s late deflected shot clipping the outside of the post in added time.
Having ended 2024 on a low after a four-match unbeaten run, the challenge for Lopetegui now is to regather his troops for their first challenge of 2025, which comes at reigning champions Manchester City next Saturday afternoon.
Before signing-off the year, however, the Head Coach had words of support for fellow goalkeeper Luděk Mikloško, who received a moving ovation from the Claret and Blue Army before kick-off on the day the Czech announced he has taken the decision to withdraw from further cancer treatment in order to enjoy the best quality of life for as long as possible.
I think that we played today against one of the best teams, very clearly, in the first half of the season.
But despite this, I think that it has been a disappointing day for us because we are very disappointed for our fans above all. I think that we can lose this game, but I think that we can do better.
It's true that there have been key moments when we had the possibility to draw the match [particularly when Kudus hit the post] but we didn't do it and they scored the second goal in the next action. It had been a strong moment for us and [after Kudus hit the post] I think that we didn't compete to meet the demands that this kind of team demand of you.
So we have to learn, we have to look forward and to improve in many things to be able to stay closer in these kinds of matches.
We had players out because of different reasons, and it's true that we had to wait until Sunday morning until we named the line-up, waiting until the last moment to know about the availability of the players.
But, despite all these things, I think that we can do better.
We have to be honest with ourselves and say that we have to learn many things to be closer in these kinds of matches with these kinds of opponents.
I repeat, despite the fact we did well in the last month, today is a bad day for us. It is not an excuse to say that we lost against Liverpool because they are the leaders. I think that it's one match of football when we played in front of our fans and for sure we can and we have to give them another face.
Jarrod Bowen went off in the second half with an injury which we have to assess over the next days, but let's see.
We wish all the best for Ludo.
We send him all the energy and we are sure that he's going to fight a lot to overcome this difficult moment.
