Next Saturday, 20th of September 2014, Liverpool will travel to London to measure forces with West Ham at Boleyn Ground for round five of the English Premier League on a clash of the utmost importance for the Reds, especially since they have already collected two defeats from four league matches so far.

Liverpool’s supporters surely want to forget last weekend’s home upset by the hands of Aston Villa and the match against West Ham might be a good opportunity to achieve such that. The Reds had another opportunity to please their fans and somehow try to compensate them after the weekend’s failure when they met the Bulgarian champions, Ludogorets, last Tuesday on a match that marked Liverpool’s return to the UEFA Champions League. Brendan Rodgers’s boys won the match by a very narrow margin, 2-1, but the team’s bumpy and inconsistent performance was probably not good enough to make supporters forget what happened during the weekend against the Villans.

Liverpool experienced some unexpected difficulties to overcome a hard working Bulgarian team and if it wasn’t for Milan Borjan’s (Ludogorets’ goalie) childish mistake in the dying moments of the match that gave away a penalty, the Reds would have had to settle with nothing more than a draw on their return to the UEFA Champions League.

The Reds looked nervous throughout the entire match and the team’s performance, especially during the first-half, was fairly unconvincing. The erratic Italian striker Mario Balotelli gave the English side the lead already late in the match, scoring his first goal for Liverpool, but it didn’t take long before the former Celta de Vigo player, Dani Abalo, leveled the match for Ludogorets.

For next Saturday’s match against West Ham, Brendan Rodgers will probably still not be able to count on Flanagan, Johnson, Skrtel, Sturridge and Can, all sidelined due to injury.

As for West Ham, the Hammers are far from having had a fairly positive season start and they have failed to win a single league match at home this term. West Ham grabbed a 2-2 draw at Hull during the last round, which may motivate the team to produce some bigger and better for the upcoming matches.

For the match against Liverpool, Sam Allardyce will probably still not be able to rely on the contribution of Nolan, Jarvis, Carroll and O’Brien, who are still sidelined because of injury.

When both sides met at Boleyn Ground last season, Liverpool won the match by 2-1 and it is very likely that history might repeat itself next Saturday, since and although the Reds are still far from their best, they have what is necessary to overcome a fragile West Ham side.

West Ham

Stats: W-1 L-3 D-1

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Liverpool

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

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Possible Line-ups

West Ham (4-3-1-2) - Adrian - Demel - Tomkins - Reid - Cresswell - Kouyate - Noble - Downing - Zarate - Sakho - Valencia

Liverpool (4-3-3) – Mignolet - Moreno - Skrtel - Lovren - Manquillo - Gerrard - Coutinho - Allen - Balotelli - Sterling - Markovic

Prediction

West Ham 1 Liverpool 2