Trent Alexander-Arnold wants to focus on next game following West Ham defeat

Trent Alexander-Arnold rued Liverpool’s failure to execute their game plan during Sunday’s 3-2 loss against West Ham United. The Reds fell to their first defeat of the season as David Moyes’ team came out on top at London Stadium in a nail-biting clash. It ended the visitors’ 25-match unbeaten streak across all competitions. On the pitch, the Hammers took the lead via an Alisson Becker own goal early on, before Alexander-Arnold levelled matters with a precise free-kick in the latter stages of the first half. However, Pablo Fornals and Kurt Zouma made it 3-1 before Divock Origi grabbed what would prove to be only a consolation goal.

Looking back at that defeat, Alexander-Arnold told Liverpoolfc.com, “Very [frustrating], on all fronts really. We never played the football we wanted to, of course never got the result that we wanted to, so yeah, it is frustrating. We’re disappointed in ourselves. We came here with a game plan, we never executed it at all, we played into their hands a lot, especially in the second half, and got sucked into their game. We allowed them set-pieces, counter-attacks – that’s exactly what they want to do, so we never did what we needed to do to win the game here today.”

On what parts of the game plan the team were unable to execute, Alexander-Arnold said, “Breaking them down really. They defended really well. We struggled to break them down and didn’t create too many chances. All in all, it was a bit slow, a bit lethargic from us. We played some decent football in the first half but coming out in the second half we never played the way we needed to win the game.”

‘Second half wasn’t good enough’

Asked whether he felt the first goal should have been disallowed, the English right-back said, “I didn’t particularly see it but there was a load of players around Ali and you could see from how they were lining up before it was even taken they were going to put multiple players on Ali and put it into that area. I think it’s one of those that can go either way in this day and age. Of course, we’re going to say it was a foul and they’re going to say it’s not, that’s just the way football is. The decision never went our way. We reacted well and got the equaliser but like I said, second half it wasn’t good enough.”

Alexander-Arnold also spoke about the disappointment of conceding two goals from corners. “Definitely. That’s something we talked about yesterday, we know West Ham are a really good set-piece team. Sometimes it’s difficult to stop them. We haven’t given them too many corners today, I think maybe they only had two all in all and they’ve scored from both of them. It was disappointing from us, we need to work on that and make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he adds.

When asked about their aim of bouncing straight back after the international break, the right-back said, “Exactly that, to be honest. Of course you learn your lessons from it, we’ve got to analyse what went wrong, but just like if we won it 3-2 today we have got to put this past us, learn what you need to learn, put it behind you and focus on the next game. It’s the internationals now so it’s about the lads coming back fit and healthy and we’ve got a massive game against Arsenal when we come back, so we’re looking forward to that.”