Another journey to a domestic cup final just wasn’t to be last night, as Liverpool’s youngsters crashed out of the FA Cup in the most disappointing fashion: in the 120th minute of extra time.
In truth, this was probably the first of the four games this season where you could fairly argue that West Ham didn’t deserve the result they ended up with. In fact, over the two games Bilic should be very concerned at how much his first team were consistently outdone by sides consisting of about 65-70% of Liverpool’s U21 team.
The result marks the third occasion this season that the team have lost to West Ham, it is also now leaves Klopp’s team with one win in six. It is an alarming slump that the players need to arrest, and that must begin with a win against bottom placed Aston Villa on Sunday.
With that in mind though, Klopp now has the newly fit talent of Daniel Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho and Divock Origi to call upon. All of whom played, and impressed, to some degree last night.
There were also half a dozen young stars that are gradually turning heads and could force themselves into a starting position come Sunday afternoon.
[ffc-gallery]Click to see our player ratings.[/ffc-gallery]