Liverpool are progressing in their discussions to name Feyenoord manager Arne Slot as Jurgen Klopp's successor

Liverpool are progressing in their discussions to name Feyenoord manager Arne Slot as Jurgen Klopp's successor

Live score updates, commentary stream and full coverage of West Ham United vs Liverpool in the Premier League at the London Stadium

Live score updates, commentary stream and full coverage of West Ham United vs Liverpool in the Premier League at the London Stadium

Liverpool are still without Diogo Jota for the trip to West Ham this weekend, but Jurgen Klopp is at least buoyed by the return of another striker.

The Reds were shocking at Goodison Park on Wednesday night, losing 2-0 in the Merseyside derby, and the season is fizzling out.

This weekend, Klopp’s side make the trip to West Ham for their latest Saturday lunchtime offering, in what could be another sticky fixture.

Liverpool aren’t helped by the fact that Jota is still unavailable for the London Stadium clash, with a muscle injury suffered at Fulham keeping him sidelined.

The Portuguese won’t be back until next month – hopefully in time for the home clash with Tottenham next Sunday.

Cody Gakpo is back, however, following the birth of his child.

Here’s who is available and who is set to miss out against West Ham:

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Away from Jota, Liverpool also still have Conor Bradley unavailable because of an ankle injury, but his return isn’t too far away.

Nothing has changed regarding Joel Matip, Thiago and Ben Doak.

Following such a terrible performance at Everton, Klopp has to decide which players to stick with and who to leave out.

Liverpool’s available squad vs. West Ham

Goalkeepers: Alisson, Kelleher, Adrian

Defenders: Van Dijk, Gomez, Konate, Quansah, Alexander-Arnold, Robertson, Tsimikas

Midfielders: Mac Allister, Jones, Endo, Szoboszlai, Elliott, Gravenberch, Bajcetic McConnell, Clark

Forwards: Salah, Nunez, Diaz, Gakpo, Danns

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Dirk Kuyt knows Arne Slot well and has unpacked what Liverpool fans can expect from the Feyenoord manager.

Dirk Kuyt knows Arne Slot well and has unpacked what Liverpool fans can expect from the Feyenoord manager.

Mohamed Salah is out of sorts, but he may be buoyed by the fact that he is facing a favourite opponent in West Ham this weekend.

Salah is the most prolific scorer in the history of this fixture with 11 goals, coming in a total of 14 appearances.

Should he score in this game, he will be the second Reds player in history to score in three different fixtures against the Hammers in the same season. John Toshack was the first in 1975/76.

Only against Man United (14) has Salah scored more goals for Liverpool in all competitions – he has also netted 11 times against Man City.

Incidentally, this will be Liverpool’s sixth 12.30pm kickoff this season – they are unbeaten in the other five, winning four and drawing one.

Reds’ dominance over West Ham outlined

Liverpool are looking for their 11th league double over West Ham in the Premier League era and their fourth in the last five seasons.

They have beaten the Hammers 35 times in the Premier League – against no team have they won more, with Newcastle also on 35.

Of the 155 goals scored in Premier League meetings, Liverpool have netted 105 of them.

Away to West Ham, they have won 14 and lost nine of 27 Premier League encounters, being beaten in only 11 of the last 70 league meetings.

Liverpool looking to reach new milestones

A Liverpool win today will see the club amass 700 league points under Jurgen Klopp.

Meanwhile, the Reds’ next first-half goal will be their 50th of the season in all competitions.

Liverpool need one goal to record 100 in all league games at West Ham, and four to reach 50 in the Premier League at the home of the Hammers.

Should they find the net they would set a new club record against the Hammers by scoring for a 16th league game in a row, eclipsing the 15 between December 1977 and September 1987.

Hit-and-miss Hammers hard to predict

West Ham currently lie in eighth place in the Premier League with 48 points. They have won more league games away from the London Stadium (seven) than they have at home (six).

The east Londoners lost at home to Arsenal and City, but won at the Emirates and travel to the Etihad on the final day of the season.

West Ham have won one of seven league games since a 3-1 win at Everton in March – a 2-1 win at Wolves – and they have not won in the last four home games since a 4-2 victory over Brentford.

They have lost each of the last two matches (2-0 at home to Fulham and 5-2 at Crystal Palace) and have conceded at least four times in five league games this season.

West Ham‘s heaviest defeat this season came in the 6-0 home loss to Arsenal in February, when they went from being goalless after 31 minutes to 4-0 down by half-time.

This season’s scorers

West Ham: Bowen 19, Kudus 13, Soucek 9, Paqueta 8, Ward-Prowse 6, Antonio 6, Zouma 3, own goals 3, Aguerd 2, Alvarez 2, Cornet 1, Cresswell 1, Emerson 1, Ings 1, Mavropanos 1

Liverpool: Salah 23, Nunez 18, Gakpo 14, Jota 15, Diaz 13, Szoboszlai 7, own goals 6, Mac Allister 6, Jones 5, Van Dijk 4, Elliott 3, Gravenberch 4, Alexander-Arnold 3, Danns 2, Endo 2, Bradley 1, Clark 1, Koumas 1, Quansah 1, Robertson 1

* Stats courtesy of LFC statistician Ged Rea (@ged0407).

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Liverpool head to the London Stadium today to take on West Ham United in the Premier League - so we simulated the clash on EA FC 24

Liverpool head to the London Stadium today to take on West Ham United in the Premier League - so we simulated the clash on EA FC 24

Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock has spoken out on his struggles with depression during the latter stages of his career and after retiring

Our Liverpool writers select their starting line-ups for today's Premier League clash with West Ham United at the London Stadium

This week's Blood Red column looks at the potential appointment of Arne Slot as Jurgen Klopp's successor and what it has to mean for Liverpool and their owners

Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock has spoken out on his struggles with depression during the latter stages of his career and after retiring

Our Liverpool writers select their starting line-ups for today's Premier League clash with West Ham United at the London Stadium

This week's Blood Red column looks at the potential appointment of Arne Slot as Jurgen Klopp's successor and what it has to mean for Liverpool and their owners

In 31 Premier League seasons, only three times have the champions been the team who recovered the most points from losing positions

When asked at which point a club gives up on a “project”, a mixture of current and former directors at Premier League clubs tend to arrive at the same answer.

“When the fans say so,” says one of them, who would like to remain nameless because he does not really want to admit publicly that, in the past, he has helped pull the trigger because of the pressure he and his colleagues were under.

On that occasion, there had been a well-laid-out plan and the club were convinced they were following the right path. Except there was the small matter of games getting in the way. When results deteriorated and the atmosphere turned, he felt like he had to act.

To save himself? A little bit. Yet he is a reminder it is a results-based business and the smartest clubs always have a succession plan if and when things go wrong — one that involves numerous options because football, after all, is a fast-moving world.

Something to consider, perhaps, especially for anyone with an interest in Tottenham Hotspur.

They face Arsenal in the North London derby tomorrow (Sunday) at the end of a season which initially promised so much — born of the early achievements of a new manager — and, despite perhaps not quite living up to those raised expectations, should still ultimately be reflected upon as progress.

There was a consensus at Spurs at the start of the season that, following the summer sale of one of the greatest players in their history, any form of European qualification at the end of it would be considered a success — and they are on course to achieve that.

Tottenham’s excellent start under Ange Postecoglou raised expectations (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

For Tottenham fans, the example of neighbours and rivals Arsenal is worth consideration, given this is their second title attempt in as many years.

In Mikel Arteta’s first full season in charge, Arsenal finished eighth with 61 points; one point above where Spurs — in fifth with six games to go — find themselves now. Perhaps crucially for Arteta, he had won the FA Cup at the end of his debut campaign following his mid-season appointment, proving he could deliver trophies and therefore buying himself more time.

Yet, by December 2020, after a year under Arteta, Arsenal were just four points above the Premier League’s relegation zone having played more games than the teams below them.

That 2020-21 season was almost entirely played behind closed doors because of restrictions on crowds related to the COVID-19 pandemic. One can only imagine the atmosphere inside the Emirates Stadium had fans been present at the time and the pressure that would have heaped upon Arteta, who needed 18 months to really start embedding his ideas, as well as a decent transfer budget, before he started to move the team up the league.

Up the road at Spurs, Ange Postecoglou has done that already, having taken the same number of points as they won last season, when the team finished eighth, with a month of the season still to go. Yet if anything can be learned from the recent history of Arsenal, it is that good managers are judged by good directors on the progress they help a club make off the pitch as well as on it.

When push comes to shove, has Postecoglou done enough to show his chairman Daniel Levy that he can be trusted to spend the sort of money, at some point, that has helped Arsenal reach where they are now?

At football clubs, control tends to be earned through indications of progression and the building of trust. At Arsenal, it is now very much Project Arteta. Though the club have highly-respected directors above him in the hierarchy, he is now involved in everything related to its football operation.

Yet the club have only reached this point after the sacking of Unai Emery, a manager who has since relaunched his career to spectacular effect at Villarreal and now Aston Villa. Emery succeeded Arsene Wenger, whose control over two decades as Arsenal manager had been total and was tied to emotional sensitivities — leading the club to a point where, with the benefit of hindsight, everyone involved in his departure agreed they waited too long to deal with it.

Emery faced an uphill task replacing Wenger (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)

A reflection of their new world post-Wenger was the sign on Emery’s office door, which changed from “manager” to “head coach”. Arsenal were trying to recreate how the club looked and was run. It was now led instead by directors; there were too many egos and ideas and, though it was possible to see what they were thinking, it simply did not work.

Under Arteta, there is an operation that is more like the Wenger era. While Emery could not take on the suits, the different figures now in charge at Arsenal are happy to be guided and respond well to his fellow Spaniard.

Though he won that FA Cup early on in his tenure to fuel confidence Arsenal were on the right path, the way Arteta handled big personalities — as well as the COVID-19 period — impressed his bosses.

Whenever he wins a manager of the month award, he invites his coaches into the commemorative photographs; he attempts to show that Arsenal’s development isn’t all about him. Yet he has also done a lot of work improving the working relationships with previously disillusioned staff.

In Arsenal’s toughest period under him, the top brass did not bow to pressure even if the particular circumstances at the time ensured that dissident fan voices were confined to angry reactions on social media.

Arsenal have never been a club who change managers often, but it is different across London at Chelsea — who endured the end of an era when Roman Abramovich was forced to sell up in the summer of 2022.

New owners BlueCo, a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, wanted to change things, and the hire of Graham Potter that September was evidence of that.

Only four years earlier, Potter had been in charge of Ostersunds in Sweden. But his achievements in European competition, especially, led to opportunities in the Championship at Swansea City and the Premier League with Brighton & Hove Albion. After coming 15th and 16th in the 20-club top flight in his first two seasons in charge, he led Brighton to a ninth-place finish in 2021-22 — at the time, their highest-ever — to establish his reputation at that level.

Chelsea considered Potter a central part of a huge rebuild at a club who had previously hired managers with a much higher profile.

Potter is flanked by Chelsea’s co-owners (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

Despite regular sackings through the 19 years of Abramovich’s ownership, a culture of success had been maintained — but the new co-chairmen Boehly and Behdad Eghbali wanted to separate from the past. They spoke of creating a more stable environment that would attract the best young players in the world, creating a squad which would serve the club for many years.

As it transpired, despite Potter signing a five-year contract, he was sacked less than seven months later having won 12 and lost 11 of his 31 games. Potter left Chelsea in a Champions League quarter-final but in the unfamiliar and lowly position of 11th in the Premier League.

It should be acknowledged that, during Potter’s tenure, huge changes were instigated both on and off the pitch. While the medical department was revamped at the club’s Cobham training ground, so too was their scouting department. He inherited a squad filled with 10 new signings from the previous summer’s transfer window, and the club made another seven in January 2023. A bloated first-team squad of 33 players struggled to fit into the dressing room at Cobham.

Given the scale of the transformation, it was always going to take time for things to settle down and allow the head coach to build a new culture. In Potter’s previous roles, as demonstrated at Brighton, he had not changed the fortune of his teams overnight. Yet Chelsea’s new owners were inevitably keen to show they were on the same page as the fanbase and, under intense pressure, they buckled and Potter was sacked.

If Premier League directors agree that good practice is knowing what to do next, Chelsea failed on that front, too. With no agreements in place to secure a replacement, Frank Lampard was asked to return to the club for a second spell as manager and, with a caretaker boss in place, results duly deteriorated.

Lampard was succeeded last summer by Mauricio Pochettino — a manager with the sort of profile that might have seen him earmarked in the Abramovich era. Pochettino has lasted longer than Potter, but Chelsea are only three points closer to European qualification.

Perhaps key men like Boehly and Eghbali can see greater progress being made off the field. Yet, under Pochettino, Chelsea have endured some damaging defeats, with the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool somewhere near the top of that list — especially considering the number of injuries their opponents had to deal with at the time. So, too, was Tuesday night’s 5-0 humiliation away to Arsenal.

Chelsea officials expected the club to qualify for Europe — and, primarily, the Champions League — under Pochettino, and they are nowhere near that. Like Potter, he has suffered from the unavailability of players this season — though that did not prove a mitigating factor when Potter’s future came under scrutiny.

Pochettino has endured a difficult season at Stamford Bridge (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

There might be a temptation to consider Pep Guardiola an immovable object considering his impact on the sport.

At Manchester City, there has never been any indication of him facing the sort of pressure experienced by Arteta, Potter and Pochettino. But City had been attempting to secure him as their manager, and Lionel Messi as a player, at various points since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008.

Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak is, was and seemingly always will be genuinely convinced that Guardiola is the right man to lead his club and has never done anything but be supportive by trying to meet his needs.

Yet in Marti Perarnau’s latest book about Guardiola, he reveals that the manager was worried he would be sacked in his 2016-17 debut season if City — who had already lost 4-0 at Camp Nou — did not beat Barcelona in the reverse fixture a couple of weeks later to give themselves a good chance of progressing from their Champions League group. While there is nothing in the book laying out the club’s point of view, it seems unlikely this would ever have happened.

It is important to note that, according to Perarnau, during contract talks before he agreed to join City, they promised him an overhaul of an ageing squad, particularly in defence. Guardiola subsequently discovered that they could only carry out half of this business in the season after he joined, with the rest of the revamp to be completed ahead of year two.

Guardiola feared he might lose his job ahead of a meeting against his former club in 2016 (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

City knew the first campaign, in which Guardiola led the team to a third-place finish in the Premier League, would be relatively difficult. Added to that was the fact they had revolutionised their academy by asking their youth teams to play the style of football Guardiola had brought to Barcelona and, besides, there was very little critical noise from the fanbase. Guardiola was always going to be granted more time to correct any problems.

There was a time in late 2020 when it seemed it was going a bit stale at City, but the club were determined that Guardiola would stay. Some people think that, if it was up to them, he would never leave.

It would have been interesting to gauge just how far that commitment would have extended had things not gone as well as they have since 2017.

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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Managers are appointed with the long-term in mind, but Graham Potter lasted less than seven months while Mikel Arteta was given time

Jurgen Klopp's team have to dust themselves off after a shock Merseyside derby defeat and look to put things right against West Ham as they aim to seal Champions League football for next season