Liverpool 0-0 West Ham: Kop have a blank look as they hit the top

Never, in their worst nightmares, can Liverpool have imagined that going top in December would feel so gut-wrenchingly sickening.

They may well now stand a point clear of Chelsea at the head of the Premier League with the crucial festive season looming.

But this desperate draw against a resolute West Ham will have felt like a humiliating defeat. In a sense, of course, it was. The Reds have now been held at home by the Hammers, Fulham and Stoke, which is effectively like losing to two of them - not the stuff champions are made of.

The fact they were booed off after becoming League leaders says it all really.

But it also says a lot about their fretting fans who are hardly creating the atmosphere required to foster a title-winning environment.

It is the crushing effect this result will have on morale that is the real cause for concern at Anfield, as well as their failure to cope with the absence of Fernando Torres.

Last night, Liverpool played as though the weight of growing expectation is a burden too great to bear.

It is hard to credit that a side so well placed can be so cripplingly low on confidence, and yet the evidence was there so painfully.

Steven Gerrard apart, not one of the attacking players in the Liverpool side took any responsibility at all, and many of them simply hid.

How can a side at the top of the league, six points clear of Manchester United, not have an innate swagger? Yet £20million Robbie Keane was so badly lacking in belief that he was hauled off after an hour, and the likes of Yossi Benayoun, Albert Riera, Dirk Kuyt and substitute Ryan

Babel didn't stand up to be counted when it mattered.

This excruciating lack of goals is seriously threatening their title chances.

They have now managed a pitiful 13 in their last 11 matches.

Predictably, a third of those goals were provided by Gerrard and it is to him that Liverpool will turn almost exclusively over the Christmas period for inspiration.

It is fortunate that in his 10 years in the first team at Anfield, he is well used to that scenario.

Last night, only he and Sami Hyypia - from set pieces - offered any sort of threat at all, as West Ham were allowed a comfortable stroll to a point that could even have been converted to all three, given their energy late in the game.

The skipper provided Liverpool's two best moments, when his cross found Benayoun who hammered a shot goalwards that visiting keeper Robert Green miraculously saved. Then his brilliant long ball found Kuyt in the penalty area and in a brilliant position, but the Dutchman never looked like he believed he would score and his weak shot was again saved by Green.

It was also from Gerrard's corner that Hyypia headed over, and later saw his effort cleared off the line by Carlton Cole.

Liverpool perhaps should have had a penalty too when Benayoun's cross hit West Ham full-back Herita Ilunga on the arm.

But West Ham had their moments as well.

Former Anfield bad-boy Craig Bellamy struck a spectacular 30-yarder that flew past the startled Pepe

Reina and shuddered against the upright. It almost got worse for the home side. Cole had the chance to win the game from Bellamy's corner, but directed his header just the wrong side of the post.

Then substitute Luis Boa Morte had a golden chance but he lost his nerve and sliced his shot into the crowd. Small mercies indeed, on a miserable, and perhaps defining, night for Liverpool.

MAN OF THE MATCH Robert Green (WEST HAM) 8 Performed heroics with brilliant saves from Benayoun and Kuyt
VILLAIN OF THE MATCH Yossi Benayoun (LIVERPOOL) 5 Had a chance to bury his former team-mates but it went begging

Liverpool : Reina 6, Arbeloa 6, Carragher 6, Hyypia 7, Dossena 5, Gerrard 8, Alonso 7, Benayoun 5, Kuyt 5, Riera 5 (Babel 78), Keane 5 (Ngog 66, 5).

West Ham : Green 8, Neill 7, Collins 6, Upson 7, Ilunga 6, Parker 6, Mullins 7, Behrami 6, Faubert 5, Bellamy 6, Cole 6.

Referee : Peter Walton.
Attendance : 41,161

Anorak West Ham's last win at Anfield was in September 1963, a month before JFK was assinated

Next three games

LIVERPOOL
Saturday: Blackburn (a) Prem
Tue Dec 9: PSV (a) CL
Sat Dec 13: Hull City (h) Prem

WEST HAM
Mon Dec 8: Spurs (h) Prem
Sun Dec 14: Chelsea (a) Prem
Sat Dec 20: Aston Villa (h) Prem

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