By Simon Leyland
On the back of respective midweek defeats, Crystal Palace and West Ham renew hostilities for Saturday’s Premier League London derby at Selhurst Park in the lunch time kick off.
The Eagles went down 2-0 to Wolverhampton Wanderers in Tuesday’s bottom-half battle, 24 hours before we failed to hang on to a 1-0 lead in a contentious 2-1 loss to Liverpool.
From the highs of Luis Paqueta ‘s screamer to the lows of being denied a last-gasp penalty, our Supremo experienced all the emotions and certainly pulled no punches after his side were controversially beaten by Liverpool in a closely-contested affair.
As a result of that, we have now slipped a place to 15th after Bournemouth beat Southampton on Thursday.
So as our five-game unbeaten run in all competitions comes to an end, there can be no downplaying the importance of a result on Saturday before a run of some very difficult matches against Manchester City, Manchester United and Europa Conference League semi-final opponents AZ Alkmaar in our opening three May fixtures.
Paqueta’s strike against Liverpool at least extended West Ham’s scoring streak to 11 matches, while their last two top-flight fixtures away to Fulham and Bournemouth both ended in victory with clean sheets in tow, and Palace have suffered back-to-back 3-2 losses to West Ham at Selhurst Park in the past two seasons. The Eagles returned the favour with a 2-1 win at the London Stadium back in November, though.
Despite coming through the loss to Liverpool unscathed, Moyes’s side had fewer than 72 hours to recover for this lunchtime kickoff, so he will certainly be tempted to introduce some fresh legs at both ends of the field.
Thilo Kehrer and Emerson could come into the picture for starts in defence, while Danny Ings a8nd Pablo Fornals can feel hopeful of displacing Michail Antonio and the underwhelming Benrahma in the final third.
West Ham United possible starting lineup?
Fabianski; Kehrer, Aguerd, Zouma, Emerson; Soucek, Rice; Bowen, Paqueta, Fornals; Ings