Aston Villa v West Ham Preview

Game number 5 of the season sees West Ham make the journey north to Birmingham to face fellow claret and blues Aston Villa.

It’s a game in that victory would see the mighty hammers go into 3^rd place. Although if Haller, Lanzini, Anderson etc have their shooting boots on and manage to put 11 past Villa we could propel ourselves into 2^nd place!

TEAM NEWS

I believe Antonio and Reid are the only players who are unavailable tonight.

Antonio has recently gone through surgery on his hamstring injury sustained in the Carabao Cup game v Newport. Return date unknown but rumoured to be January.

Reid is Winston Reid so we can expect him to pick up injuries while in the physio room getting a current injury seen to, in this case it’s his knee. Next week its his toe, followed by his hamstring, followed by vertigo after being asked to get up off the treatment table!

Everyone else appears to be fit and eligible for selection!

West Ham have the chance to go 3^rd, players are fit, we could be looking at a run of three wins in a row, what the hell is going on??

PREDICTED LINE UP

As we all know Manuel Pellegrini likes to stick with a winning side so I doubt very much that we will see any changes from the last game.

So there’s little point in me making a case for Balbuena for the umpteenth time. Angelo, it looks like your position is safe for the time being.

Tonight’s line up is likely to be:

Its hard to argue against keeping a winning side but there is also the chance you become too predictable. I’m always of the opinion its ‘horses for courses’. You set up to play to your strengths and expose the oppositions weaknesses.

To be fair though, looking at that team above I think its exactly what we should have out against Aston Villa.

I can’t wait for the game.

It feels like ages since we last had a game, and I love a Monday night match. Any excuse to settle in front of the TV with a beer or several!

It’s also worth noting that Aston Villa have won just one of their last 16 Monday night matches. And they have also lost 15 out of their last 17 Premier League games (3 out of 4 this season).

So, with that in mind, past experience tells us, it can only mean one thing! An Aston Villa win!

Then again this is a new West Ham and I have every confidence in us tonight, maybe not to the extent of the 11-0 win but I can see us being above the Spurts by 9:50pm tonight!

COYI!

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