Just as few tennis players can claim to genuinely have Novak Djokovic’s number, it is fair to say that no team has enjoyed an especially brilliant record at Anfield over the years.
West Ham’s, though, is notably bad. Since the start of the 2000 season, no team has lost at the ground more often than the Hammers, who have left empty handed on 17 of their 22 visits. Their sole victory in that period, in 2015, is also a lonely outlier in an otherwise barren spell spanning 60 years. David Moyes, the manager tasked with bucking the trend in Wednesday's Carabao Cup quarter-final, has never won there in 20 attempts across the course of his career.
And yet, the Irons head to Merseyside in optimistic mood, the 5-0 hammering at Fulham 10 days ago seemingly confirmed as a blip in a fine run that has otherwise included seven wins and a draw in nine matches either side of the international break.
The fearless talents of Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Paqueta and Jarrod Bowen are now operating in easy sync, unlikely to be haunted by memories they do not have of late Graeme Souness and Steve McMahon winners in this fixture during the Eighties.
“Anfield is a really difficult place to go, as our record suggests,” first-team coach Billy McKinlay said on Tuesday. “If it was the same group of players who had been going there for the last 60 years then we’d be in trouble!
“We’ve got a new group of players going up there and there is no reason to have any trepidation and we won’t have any mindset other than ‘this will be a tough game and we’re going to have to play well to win the game’.”
The Scot believes, too, that victory in last season’s Europa Conference League has spurred Hammers belief.
“Success and winning gives you a couple of things,” he added. “It makes you hungry for more and it gives you a feeling that you’re capable of doing it and being successful and winning things.”
Following Chelsea’s shootout victory over Newcastle on Tuesday, success this evening would leave West Ham, currently eighth in the Premier League, as the highest-ranked team left in the competition and a two-legged semi-final - against one of Chelsea, Fulham and Middlesbrough - away from a first Wembley cup final since 1981.
That remains a couple of steps down the track, with Liverpool firm favourites despite a drab show in drawing 0-0 with Manchester United on Sunday and, before that, a run on which points often came in spite of performance. Jurgen Klopp’s planning, too, is complicated by Saturday’s League meeting with Arsenal, from which the victor will likely be top at Christmas.
End their Anfield hoodoo on Wednesday, and Moyes’s side will spend theirs in particularly lofty spirits.
