West Ham will make a 360 miles round trip to Wales to face Newport County in the Carabao Cup on a mid-week game in late August.
West Ham were drawn in the southern pool which is supposed to reduce travel for away supporters but it won’t feel like that for many Hammers fans.
The Hammers have played Newport County a total of three times in their combined history, winning one, drawing one and losing one.
The win and the draw came in 1947 in the old Division two while the most recent game resulted in an away loss in the third round FA Cup when John Lyall’s team came unstuck 2-1 at Newport stadium with Byran Robson the only West Ham scorer.
Last year Newport held Spurs to a 1-1 draw in the fourth round of the FA Cup showing the Welsh team can still mix it with the big boys and this game will not be an easy pushover for Manuel Pellegrini and his team.
The away allocation is likely to be around 1,000 although they did offer Spurs a ticket allocation of 1,660 last year after installing an extra 600 temporary seats.
We supposedly have competition in every position now so will be interesting to see if Cardoso, Ajeti etc get a run out. Reserve team Roberto, Masuaku, Cardoso, Ogbonna, Johnson, Yarmolenko, Noble, Snodgrass, Holland, Antonio, Ajeti ? Who knows ? We should be able to beat a team like Newport we should also recognise it’s a cup final for them and they will be playing at 200% of their normal level but that should have been the case last year against AFC Wimbledon and we all know what happened…
We’ve got history with lots of lower division opponents . It depends hugely on how much importance West Ham attach to this competition . History demonstrate’s , not much .
Very annoying and not what the Fans want . It’s been a long wait for any silverware and it’s high time we seriously went for it . We have been let down and embarrassed too many times by managers who don’t realize the importance of it .
COYHAMMERS
Newport knocked a very decent Leicester City out of the cup last season and their little ground was rocking to the rafters. We underestimate them at our peril.