LIVERPOOL have performed with such bewildering inefficiency on Merseyside in recent weeks it is now second nature for Roy Evans to seek solace in the form of other people's results, or more particularly, other people's shortcomings.

By the time he was called upon to pass judgment on another listless performance, the Liverpool manager was already aware that rivals, great and small, real and perceived, had endured similarly unproductive afternoons. He was clearly dispirited but there was at least a straw to clutch at.

It was probably only later, as he placed distance between himself and Anfield, that Evans came to consider the very real possibility that his side may have to continue to rely exclusively on the failings of others if his own club's faltering drive towards a first title in eight years is to be sustained.

Liverpool could have won by a distance, they could have lost by a distance. Despite spending much of their time shuffling personnel and modifying tactics to accommodate the bruised and the limping, they still struck the woodwork three times - John Barnes, Robbie Fowler and Patrik Berger, all within an inch or two of fashioning a breakthrough.

But the cavalier spirit lives on at Upton Park and by paying no heed at all to the commonly held theory that to attack Liverpool is to encourage disaster, West Ham also went close to sneaking it.

Breacker hit a post and had Liverpool's one truly outstanding individual, goalkeeper David James, not produced an array of fine stops the applecart would have been spilling its wares long before the catcalls began to emanate from frozen lips.