West Ham were tonights visitors to Anfield and to summarise in the simplest of terms, there was more life in their 1500 travelling fans than there was in their first eleven, who rolled over to a 3-0 defeat. They found themselves at the hands of a Liverpool side that never even needed to get out of 2nd gear to dominate the game from beginning to end.

Talk during the day had been of West Ham fans expecting to take full advantage of a Liverpool side missing the “9 Torres” shirt for the remainder of the season and one that would most certainly have one eye on the Europa League Semi-Final first leg against Atletico Madrid on Thursday, however the script couldnt have been much further from the truth.

West Ham started to whimper after 19mins when Yossi Benayou calmly chested in a defence splitting delivery from Steven Gerrard and they promptly turned the lights off and let the cat out 10 minutes later, when Benayoun found Maxi out on the right who’s pinged pass found David Ngog’s run and he promptly fired in Torres style from 6 yards out with too much pace for Green to keep it out of the Hammers net.

From here on in, whichever way you dressed it up, it became no more than a training match at best with a West Ham side already resigned to defeat with 60 minutes left on the clock still. Missing Scott Parker badly in the middle of the park, the Hammers expressed no heart, passion or even sign of a side that looked capable of fighting their way out of a relegation battle but more of a side that thought there was even less chance of their relegation rivals picking up anymore points this season than they could.

When Kyrgiakos exposed a lack of marking just coming up to the hour mark, to make it 3-0 as his shot came back off the inside of the post and was put over his own line by Rob Green in the Hammers goal, it was very much time for Gerrard to call it a day and get some rest ahead of the challenge of Atletico Madrid in 72hrs time.

Liverpool played some good football at times, Benayoun involved in most of the lead up play, earning his “Man of the Match” award and Gerrard looking somewhat closer to enjoying his football again. Gerrard produced a number of deliveries in to the box that would have left Fernando Torres banging his crutches on the floor of Dr Cugat’s Catalan surgery, wondering what might have been if he had featured in tonights squad, it really could have been a good number more with or without him.

Further praise will head in the direction of Daniel Agger as he continues his temporary left back role with somewhat ease and at times class. Maxi Rodriguez who again showed a good work ethic, growing EPL game adaption and being a clever piece of business from Rafa Benitez. Kyrgiakos continued to show that £1.5m can also buy you a very assured and imposing centre half that knows how to get the job done with a minimum of fuss and complication.

Liverpool will be very happy with the 3pts, extensive time on the ball and very little energy expended to achieve it. It certainly wouldnt be fair, let alone accurate to start throwing around any superlatives for the Reds performance tonight as they just didnt need to work at that kind of level to draw them. As cliched as it maybe, you can only beat what is put in front of you and tonight that really wasnt much.

The Reds now head off happy to Europe, albeit by a mixture of coach, train and plane thanks to a certain volcano and to start to claim their spot in a certain “lesser grade” tournament. A tournament that suddenly seems to be gaining more than a little interest as the Champions League lies at the same stage, devoid of any English input.