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Hammers announce final showpiece friendly

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The FC Lyon ground

West Ham United  preparations for the 2022/23 campaign with a pre-season match at RC Lens.

The club has revealed this morning that the trip to northern France will see us take on a side which finished the 2021/22 season,  seventh in Ligue 1 above the likes of champions Lille and West Ham’s UEFA Europa League quarter-final opponents Olympique Lyonnais.

David Moyes’ squad will travel to the 38,000-capacity Stade Bollaert-Delelis on Saturday 30 July, with kick-off at 6.15pm local time (5.15pm UK time).

The club says that ticket details for our trip to tackle Frank Haise’s side will be announced in due course.

The fixture will mark the climax of the Irons’ pre-season schedule, with Moyes’ men also travelling to Swiss Super League side Servette (Friday 8 July), National League outfit Boreham Wood and EFL League One opponents Ipswich Town (both Tuesday 12 July), EFL Championship clubs Reading (Saturday 16 July) and Luton Town (Saturday 23 July) and Scottish Premiership side Rangers (Tuesday 19 July).

ClaretandHugh says: Sadly things being as they are the club is unable to offer a pre-season friendly at the London Stadium but with games coming up against plenty of domestic opposition plus Servette, Rangers and now Lyon, the team should be well prepared for the new season, by which time hopefully David Moyes will have brought in the required six players or so he is claimed to want. These look a very decent series of eight games at the end of what will have been a very short summer for the players ahead of a season to be sadly interrupted by the World Cup. Hopefully, as Sean wrote, we can see a friendly arranged for the London Stadium against good club opposition and maybe two or three on away turf given the restrictions on those allowed at our gaff during the international tournament.

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Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!"

Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon