David Moyes has hailed “excellent” Liverpool as the best in the world – but stopped short of calling them the greatest Premier League side of all time.
And the West Ham boss has revealed the significant mistake his players made in their on Wednesday.
Liverpool, the European and world champions, are now 19 points clear at the Premier League summit having extended their unbeaten league run to 41 games and taken 70 points from a possible 72 – continuing a best start to a season ever by any team in the history of Europe’s top five leagues.
And Moyes said: “They are as good as there is around at this moment in time.
“It’s very difficult when I’ve been the manager of Everton and Manchester United to say that, but Liverpool are an excellent side.
“They have so many strings to their bow and whatever you try to do to stop them, they have other ways to get around you.
“But what I would say is that whoever the best team is, every other team and manager is trying to find ways of beating them.”
Moyes added: “It will be wrong to say they are the best ever, when you think of the good United and Arsenal teams of the past. We are in a different era and it’s difficult to judge them exactly.
“But two years ago I don’t think anybody could see anyone beating Manchester City but what happens is that every other team sees that is the level they have to go to.
“All the top teams will be trying to find ways of beating Liverpool.”
Mohamed Salah gave Liverpool the lead from the spot 10 minutes before the interval before setting up the second on 52 minutes for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on the counter-attack.
The goal came from a break from a West Ham corner, with Moyes not happy his team failed to carry out one specific pre-match instruction.
“It was a heavy blow to take,” said the West Ham boss. “Of course, we talked about their speed on the counter-attack but what was more important was that we spoke about keeping the ball away from Van Dijk’s head.
“He’s the one who heads the corner out and they break from it, and everybody knows the part of it with Salah and the speed they have got.
“For them to score the penalty was bad enough, and the counter-attack was disappointing at a time when we were growing into the game as well.”
