Rudderless Liverpool cast adrift

West Ham Utd 1 Liverpool 0Liverpool's plod in the Premier League has juddered to a halt. This game had drifted into stoppage time at the end when the visitors imploded, the normally reliable Jamie Carragher tripping Fredrik Ljungberg in the penalty area to offer West Ham a chance they gleefully took. Mark Noble's penalty was precise. Rafael Benitez's season has a new nadir.

The reality was that the visitors deserved no more than the point they must have thought was theirs with the final whistle so close.

Instead they continue to labour, now in seventh place, with Manchester United and Arsenal, 17 points above them at the pinnacle, specks on the horizon. Frustration is welling.

This season's league campaign had long since degenerated into an unsatisfactory scramble to secure fourth and a place in the Champions League. At present Liverpool do not appear capable even of achieving that much.

West Ham were admirable here but hardly effervescent. They prevailed regardless.

Liverpool had arrived in east London unbeaten in nine games in all competitions, an impressive statistic if hugely deceptive. Since securing an unconvincing win at the Premier League's whipping boys of the moment, Derby County, on St Stephen's Day, the Merseysiders had beaten only Luton Town of League One and Havant & Waterlooville of the Blue Square South.

In that context the intrigue surrounding the ownership of the club had rather served to mask worrying frailties within Benitez's side, typified by profligacy at one end and unfamiliar vulnerability at the other.

This contest had threatened to expose both. So ferocious was Liverpool's initial thrust that West Ham's defence was gripped by confusion, the fluid running of Fernando Torres prompting a shot after 53 seconds.

Yossi Benayoun might have converted within 10 minutes but, thereafter, West Ham settled and Liverpool retreated.

By the interval they might have trailed. There is rare confidence coursing through this West Ham side, no doubt still a legacy of last month's unlikely victory over Manchester United here.

It would have been just reward for their pressure had Luis Boa Morte kept his head down and not scooped over the bar from point-blank range after George McCartney's long throw into the area had prompted panic.

Liverpool had won the previous six league meetings between the sides and, if their play remained disjointed, there was bite to their breaks. Stephen Gerrard and Torres invariably provided the energy.

It was the Spaniard's cross that reached the substitute Lucas Leiva, the Brazilian's attempt deflected marginally wide of the post.

Robert Green had to block with his legs when Torres finally gained a sight of goal, turning to prod Ryan Babel's contribution on target yet, by then, there was a franticness to the visitors' approach born of desperation.

WEST HAM: Green, Neill, Ferdinand, Upson, McCartney, Ljungberg, Noble, Mullins, Bowyer (Ashton 58), Boa Morte (Etherington 59), Cole (Spector 81). Subs not used: Wright, Solano.

LIVERPOOL: Reina, Finnan, Carragher, Hyypia, Aurelio, Benayoun (Babel 72), Gerrard, Alonso, Kewell (Lucas 61), Torres, Kuyt. Subs not used: Itandje, Crouch, Skrtel. Booked: Aurelio, Torres, Alonso.

Referee: Alan Wiley (Staffordshire).