Michail Antonio knows West Ham face a tough match this weekend when his side take on Liverpool, but the striker has belief his team can take something from the game.
West Ham ran out 3-2 winners in the reverse fixture earlier this season but prior to that the Hammers had gone ten matches against the Reds without victory. West Ham's record at Anfield is even worse with just one win at Anfield since 1963, which came in 2015 when goals from Manuel Lanzini, Mark Noble and Diafra Sakho sealed a shock 3-0 triumph.
Five members of the 2015 matchday squad remain at West Ham, but of those only Lanzini and Aaron Cresswell are likely to start. Darren Randolph has dropped to third-choice goalkeeper and both Angelo Ogbonna and Noble are out with injury.
Michail Antonio signed for West Ham just three days after that win and the striker is confident his team can repeat the result as long as they get off to a good start.
"Obviously it is going to be a very hard game. Liverpool are always difficult, away as well, but we always believe, we always think we can get something," Antonio told the Footballers Football podcast.
"[Against] Liverpool there are always bits in the game where we can nick something but in the end, they always try and get something back off us. Hopefully, we take our opportunities early and we kill the game early because a lot of the time when we play against them when it comes to the dying moments they manage to grab something.
"If we can do something early in the game hopefully we can take something from the game."
West Ham's form of late has been poor, with the Hammers excellent against Wolves last weekend the anomaly. David Moyes' side were disappointing in defeat against Southampton in midweek as they exited the FA Cup and Antonio admitted over the past few weeks his side have struggled.
"Over the last six to eight weeks we have not had the best of performances," the striker said.
However, after the defeat to Southampton Antonio was in bullish mood: "Obviously we wanted to go further in this competition, and now we’re out, so all we’ve got to do is concentrate on what we are in now, and that’s the Europa League and the Premier League.
"We’re still going for the top four, so with all the negatives that have happened [at Southampton], we’ve got to think about the positives for the season. We’ve got the top four chase still and we’re in the last 16 of the Europa League. Let’s just see what we can do with those and keep moving forwards.
"One thing about us is that nothing knocks us down. We don’t stay down. We get up and we go again."
