Whispers

Hammers fine Villa Park record

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West Ham United – unbeaten in their  last five visits to Villa Park in the Premier League – saw Pablo Fornals score last season and he also snatched one in  the 4-1 victory the previous season in which Ben Johnson, Declan Rice and Jarrod Bowen also scored.

We also scored a 2-0 win up there in the Premier League game in  2014, with  Kevin Nolan easing our relegation fears with a double strike.

Our best-ever result at Villa Park was a 5-1 First Division victory scored in April 1927, when Vic Watson (two), Stan Earle, Joseph Johnson and Jimmy Ruffell shared the visitors’ goals.

Overall, our biggest top-flight win over Villa came in August 1958, when Ted Fenton’s newly promoted Hammers thrashed their opponents 7-2 in the First Division at the Boleyn Ground, where Vic Keeble, John Dick and Malcolm Musgrove each scored twice.

The referee thhis time will  be David Coote.

This will be his first Hammers match this season on Sunday, and was last in charge when we hosted Arsenal at London Stadium in April.

On that occasion he awarded a penalty to each team as the Hammers came from 2-0 down to force a 2-2 draw .

He has taken charge of eleven West Ham matches in total, with the Irons having won two of them – including last season’s 1-0 victory at Villa Park

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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