Liverpool has lost three times in their first five matches for the first time since the Premier League was revamped, dropping a 3-1 decision to West Ham United on Saturday.

“We were nowhere near the standard,” Brendan Rodgers said. “Lots of elements of our game have been very good in the last few seasons, but it’s not quite happening for us at the moment. We have a lot of work to do, but that was disappointing. We showed our potential in the Tottenham Hotspur game [won 3-0] when we had key players fit, and showed the quality and intensity of the team. But, even with those guys out, we should still be better than we were today.

“We’ve set a new expectancy at the club and we have to deal with that now. It’s a club people want to beat, but we’re even more so now we’re in the Champions League. It’s something we need to deal with. I’ve always said we’re a work in progress – we probably arrived early last year – and people will look at Chelsea and Manchester City as the two squads set up for the title race, but there are no limits to what we want to achieve at Liverpool.

“We just want to keep moving forward. But we’ve lost three of our last five, so we can’t even entertain talk of that until we get some sort of consistency. We have to get back to what we were doing in the Spurs game.”