We look ahead to Wednesday’s EFL Cup quarter final with our Liverpool vs West Ham prediction and preview. Can David Moyes finally win a competitive game at Anfield?
Liverpool vs West Ham Stats: The Quick Hits
- Liverpool are predicted to win this match against West Ham, with the Opta supercomputer giving them a 64.8% chance of progressing inside 90 minutes.
- West Ham have won just one of their last 55 competitive away games against Liverpool (D14 L40).
- David Moyes has never won a competitive match at Anfield in 20 attempts (D7 L13).
Match Preview
Liverpool and West Ham United will face off at Anfield on Wednesday night in the final tie of the four EFL Cup quarter-finals, hoping to progress to the two-legged semis and move one tie away from a final appearance at Wembley Stadium on 25 February 2024.
The last time Liverpool reached this stage of the competition, they went on to win it (2021-22), but progression from this tie will see them get to the League Cup semis for just the second time in nine seasons.
The Merseyside club could hit a competition landmark in this game, as they are just two goals away (498) from scoring 500 goals in English League Cup history and becoming the second team to hit that tally after Aston Villa (514).
West Ham are looking to reach the League Cup semi-final for the first time since 2013-14, going out at this stage of the competition three times since then. They’ll have a near fully-fit squad to choose from on Wednesday night at Anfield, with Michail Antonio expected to be the only first-team player out with injury.
Liverpool have more injury worries ahead of this match, with Joël Matip recently joining the list of long-term absentees alongside Stefan Bajcetic. The quartet of Andrew Robertson, Diogo Jota, Thiago Alcantara and Alexis Mac Allister are all expected to be out of action until the new year, but assistant manager Pep Lijnders revealed on Tuesday that Ryan Gravenberch could be in contention despite coming off with muscle fatigue in Sunday’s draw with Manchester United.
Jürgen Klopp may look to rest some first-teamers ahead of Saturday’s huge top-of-the-table Premier League clash with Arsenal, which might mean Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk, Alisson and Dominik Szoboszlai move out of the starting XI.
West Ham also have a packed schedule in December after their European matches, so they could rest the players to have played the most competitive minutes in 2023-24 so far – Lucas Paquetá, James Ward-Prowse, Vladimír Coufal and Nayef Aguerd.
Recent Form
Liverpool head into this match looking to avoid a third winless game in the space of a week. They lost 2-1 to Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise in the UEFA Europa League last Thursday before drawing 0-0 with Manchester United on Sunday in the league. This run follows a four-game winning streak versus LASK, Fulham, Sheffield United and Crystal Palace.
West Ham are in good form ahead of this clash, having lost just one of their last nine competitive games. The Hammers have won seven games in this run, with wins over Freiburg in the UEFA Europa Conference League (2-0) and Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League (3-0) following a heavy 5-0 loss to London rivals Fulham on 10 December. Mohammed Kudus is their man in form, having scored four goals in his last five appearances, including a brace in the weekend win over Wolves. His teammate Lucas Paquetá registered a hat-trick of assists in that victory at London Stadium, becoming the second Brazilian ever to do so in the Premier League after former Liverpool forward Roberto Firmino.
Liverpool have won five of their last six EFL Cup quarter-final ties, with the exception being a 5-0 loss to Aston Villa in 2019-20 when their entire first team were away at the FIFA Club World Cup. The average age of their starting XI that day was just 19 years, 183 days old – the second youngest in the club’s history.
Liverpool vs West Ham Head-to-Head
Liverpool have already defeated West Ham in 2023-24, winning 3-1 at Anfield in the Premier League on 24 September. Goals from Salah, Darwin Núñez and Diogo Jota rendered a strike from Jarrod Bowen meaningless. This was the second game in a row that Núñez had scored at Anfield versus West Ham, after previously heading in the only goal of the game in a 1-0 Premier League win there last season.
Those two victories form half of a four-game winning run for Liverpool against West Ham, with the London side last beating the Reds at London Stadium in their Premier League meeting on 7 November 2021 – with Kurt Zouma scoring the winning goal.
Anfield has not been a happy hunting ground for West Ham in recent memory. The Hammers have won just one of their last 55 competitive away games at the home of Liverpool (D14 L40) with that solitary victory coming in August 2015 thanks to a 3-0 victory, two months prior to Klopp’s appointment as manager.
It’s not just West Ham who have suffered at Anfield, either. David Moyes has a miserable record at Liverpool, failing to win in any of his 20 previous attempts at Anfield as a manager (D7 L13) – he’s only faced Chelsea (23) and Arsenal (22) more often on the road without ever winning.
This will be the first EFL Cup meeting between Liverpool and West Ham since the fourth round in 1988-89, when the Hammers won 4-1 at Upton Park with John Lyall as manager.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off in this Carabao Cup match, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Liverpool vs West Ham Prediction
Liverpool are predicted to advance to the semi-final of the EFL Cup with a victory over West Ham by the Opta supercomputer. They won 64.8% of the 10,000 match simulations ahead of kick-off on Wednesday night, which is the highest percentage of any of the eight EFL Cup quarter-finalists playing this week.
West Ham won just 16.3% of the pre-match sims played out by the supercomputer, but a further 18.9% of them ended in a draw after 90 minutes and went to penalties.
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