This’ll be the second of FOUR, back-to-back league games that kick off on a Saturday at 3:00pm, by the way. 😮 I can’t recall the last time that happened nor guess when we might see that again, if ever.
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| London Stadium |
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct from the starting line-up in the last game: 8/11).
A very fluid 4-1-4-1 / 4-2-3-1 / 4-3-3:
____________________Haaland____________________
_Doku__________________________________Alvarez_
____________________________Foden_____________
_____________Silva_____________________________
_____________________Rodri_____________________
Gvardiol__________________________________Walker
____________Dias______________Akanji____________
____________________Ederson____________________
Subs: Carson, Ortega, Gomez, Lewis, Ake, Phillips, Nunes & Bobb.
Just yer 8 from a possible 9 on the bench, I think today – we’re not Chelsea and unless our manager decides to stick an additional EDS player ‘in there’, we’ve literally ran out of available players.
Ederson takes his place between the posts.
I think we’ll see a back-4 this afternoon of Josko, Ruben, Manuel & Kyle.
Rodders to roam the deepest of our midfielders, while I believe we’ll see a more advance, attacking / creative quartet of Jeremy, Bernado, Phil & Julian.
Erling to head the lot up front.
Not only may we have one player short on the bench but I think we’re likely to see two keepers on the side as well, in the form of Scott & Stefan. Three defenders, two central midfielders and one winger / forward make up the rest, which includes Sergio, Rico, Nathan, who gave us a little hamstring injury scare whilst away on international duty and, so, might be eased back in slowly, Kalvin, Matheus & Oscar.
Notable absences:
- John Stones – It appears that a muscular issue is taking longer to heal than recently expected. Sill no return date.
- Jack Grealish – Still out injured with, what is now being described as, a bad knock to his knee rather than a muscular issue. Unknown return date.
- Kevin De Bruyne – Recovering from a torn hamstring / surgery. Expected return around December / January.
- Mateo Kovacic – Has a slight muscular problem and is unavailable for this fixture. No information about a possible return date but it doesn’t sound too serious.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Yeah, looks good!
Result? I’m not sure who is more surprised by West Ham’s start, me or West Ham fans themselves. I recall, with just a couple of weeks to go before the start of the season, a high number of concerned and frustrated Hammers fans phoning in to TalkSport as well as taking to their phones to post video rants online about the club’s lack of purchases and disorganisation in general when it came to recruitment.
Fast-forward just a few weeks and we go to a side with a record that looks like this: D W W W – F9 A4.
So, they’re sure to be buoyed by their excellent start to the season and I think what makes our hosts a particularly dangerous side to face is that, even if they have an off day today but somehow survived our various assaults; they have players such as Jarrod Bowen & James Ward-Prowse who can pull rabbits out of nowhere in a split second to sucker punch the opposition. Jarrod himself expressed the mood in the camp when he said that there’s no pressure on them when they face us this afternoon and that they see this fixture as an opportunity to test themselves.
I don’t like / can’t read quite so well first matches back after an international break – sometimes we’ve regrouped and played well right from the first blow of the ref’s whistle but I’ve also seen us, all too often, take a while to ‘rev up’. That alone makes this one a little trickier to call, aside from the fact that we have three players out, in addition to Kevin, who would have stood an extremely good chance of starting today’s match if they’d have been 100% fit.
I think this is going to be a good game and it could well be very tight for a time; although I’ve said that before about certain clashes and we’ve gone on to score in the 2nd or 3rd minute and not looked back.
However the game may flow, I’m having this down as a good away win for us.
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match prediction and result:
Prediction: Win
Result: Won
(Pre-match blog posting from that game)
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| Solidarity |
Tough games to call after international break.
ReplyDeleteI expect West Ham to sit back and be hard to break down and try and counter on the break... If Peps team get come away with all 3 points, it's a a double bonus!
Thank you for reading and for your comment. Sorry it's taken a while to reply - Google Blogger issues. I agreed with your assessment and was how it largely panned out. Cheers once again.
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