A midweek fixture list takes the mighty Hammers off to Wolverhampton to play the Wanderers. Why does their official name seem to be so different from their more well-known name of Wolves?
Never an easy fixture for West Ham, in fact, they have won just the one game in their last seven in the Premier League, a 2-0 victory back in August 2009. Goals from Noble and Upson.
And just to make things even more depressing, West Ham haven’t had a win in nine Premier League away games played on a Wednesday night, failing to score in their last 5! Why could we not have played last night instead?
To top things off, Wolves are on a run of nine unbeaten Premier League games.
Those stats are not exactly filling me with confidence now, despite coming off a victory against Lampard’s Chelsea on Saturday!
TEAM NEWS
West Ham are still without keeper Fabianski and Lanzini as the long-term injury doubts.
Reid and Wilshere are back training with the first team but can’t see them making the squad for this match.
Rumours are rife that Antonio has a groin strain and could be a doubt, but apparently Holland has travelled with the squad. I’d love to see him given some game time.
PREDICTED LINE UP
With Pellegrini mixing things up a bit at the weekend, will he go with the same starting eleven and formation or will he resort to type? We know he doesn’t like to change a winning side, but will he be tempted to go back to the formation that teams had sussed out?
At the press conference it was apparent Martin would again start in goals and rightly so. I’m not saying our victory on Saturday was down to him, but I think the players seemed to know how much it meant to him to make his debut that they upped their game significantly.
Big decisions to be made at the back. Does Diop come back in? Who then gets dropped? My thoughts would be to go with the same back four. It will keep Diop on his toes and he maybe will also benefit from the bit of a rest as I can’t remember the last time he wasn’t in the starting eleven.
In the middle, I’d go with Rice and Noble as usual. Hopefully Rice continues his form from the weekend, after having his best game in a long time, in my opinion.
Snodgrass has done nothing wrong and brings in that bit of workrate we need in there, so should keep his place, as should Fornals. I’ve not been a fan of Fornals but thought he played very well against Chelsea, from what I saw. Plus, if the rumours are true about Holland being on the bench, it’s a nice option to bring in if he’s not performing.
If Antonio isn’t available, then Haller can come back in in the role that Antonio had as part of a front two with Anderson.
Supposedly Anderson had a strop being substituted on Saturday and it was something I had said to the wee lad when we were watching the game. Anderson never seems to get a full 90 minutes, he’s always one of the first off no matter what. Hopefully he goes out to prove himself tonight and make sure Pellegrini can’t take him off.
So, I believe / hope we will line up something like:
I will be hacking into my boss’ Amazon Prime account tonight to watch the game. Strange time for midweek kick-offs though, at 7:30pm & 8:15pm, compared to the more usual 7:45pm / 8:00pm kick-offs during the week.
Not that it matters to me from the comfort of my sofa, but it seems like the TV / Media companies can do whatever they want regardless of the fanbase. And no one bats an eyelid!
Last night there seemed to be lots of issues with the streaming hopefully that’s not the case tonight. It’s a far cry from trying to stream from some dodgy site on a regular or dial up connection, so I might be accepting of a few buffers here and there.
I do actually feel optimistic about tonight’s game. But looking at those stats at the top of the page I think I’ll settle for a draw. Every point is crucial at the minute. No! I’m not morphing into Sam Allardyce with his ‘respect the point’ attitude!
Score draw my prediction!
COYI!
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