There is no shame in defeat at Anfield, an outcome West Ham and David Moyes have each sampled more often than most. There must be regret, though, in a surrender as tame as this.
With momentum building on a run of seven wins from nine matches, and Liverpool perhaps distracted by the shootout for Christmas No1 with Arsenal to come, many Hammers travelled north with cautious optimism that conditions might be ripe for only a second Anfield triumph in 60 years, and that a place as the top-ranked side among the Carabao Cup’s final four may lie in wait.
Instead, they got a crippling six changes to an in-form team and six goals, five in favour of the hosts, who join Chelsea, Fulham and Middlesbrough in the semi-finals after a brutal triumph.
So good and so dominant were Liverpool that even a first-choice West Ham team may well have been comfortably dispatched. The Hammers have, after all, come here with full-strength sides on plenty of occasions and still left as victors only once since 1963.
But even so, Moyes’s team selection must come under scrutiny for setting the tone before the off.
Yes, the Hammers’s schedule has been particularly relentless, Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off against Manchester United set to be their sixth match in 17 days, and yes, the Scot has at times been criticised for not rotating enough, most notably when a visibly exhausted XI were hammered at Fulham.
Nor are they blessed with the kind of depth that allowed Jurgen Klopp to make the same number of alterations to his starting XI without any sign of a drop off here.
But why was this the night, with a semi-final place in a winnable competition on the line, on which so many previously untrusted players were thrust into the firing line?
Ben Johnson has not played a minute in the Premier League this season, nor even made the bench in the competition of late, but with Aaron Cresswell still feeling the effects of illness, was brought in ahead of regular left-back Emerson.
Angelo Ogbonna has not started a League game since August, but with Nayef Aguerd sick, came into the centre of an already weakened defence alongside the lumbering Konstantinos Mavropanos.
And would Lucas Paqueta really have played through injury as regularly as he has of late if Moyes considered Said Benrahma an able deputy?
Of the three, Johnson, in fairness, acquitted himself well with a gutsy display in the circumstances, but the trio’s novel combination on the left made it open season down that flank for Liverpool in attack and had Harvey Elliott’s cross from the same direction not been headed just wide by Cody Gakpo, the game might have been dead at half-time.
Instead, the Reds led by only a single goal, thrashed in by Dominik Szoboszlai seconds after Benrahma had blown a golden chance to send Jarrod Bowen away on the break.
That Benrahma made it out for the second half was something of a surprise, the sight of Rio native Paqueta warming up in just a short-sleeve match shirt in the Merseyside mizzle clear indication that the change was imminent.
It did not come soon enough, however, Curtis Jones squeezing through the legs of Alphonse Areola to end the tie as a contest.
Next came Gakpo’s clincher, from a Tomas Soucek gaff, proving it was not only Moyes’s second-string that failed to deliver on the night.
Bowen’s well-taken consolation only served to poke the beast, substitute Mohamed Salah and then Jones again completing the rout as the Hammers simply fell apart.
