Tomas Soucek was the last West Ham player to score against tonight’s opponents Lincoln City in the Carabao Cup clash under David Moyes in 2023.
Lincoln, now back in the Championship for the first time in their recent history, welcome West Ham tonight with a stated intent to repeat the feats of Millwall and QPR and give the Hammers something to fear in the opening exchanges.
Last season’s third division champions await Nuno’s West Ham side knowing that the Hammers have a familiar pattern: Start slowly, go behind and then spend the rest of the game trying to claw back the goal – or goals – gifted to their opponents as a head start. Surely a frenetic first twenty minutes awaits West Ham after Lincoln’s assistant manager, former Hammer Chris Cohen promised to ‘create chaos’ to maximise his team’s effectiveness against the Irons’ achilles heel.
The question on most fans’ lips is how Nuno will set about combatting the jitters that afflicts his fragile West Ham defence in the first half of their recent games: A change of personnel or starting formation?
The line up has just been announced and tinker man Nuno is at it again. Mukasa and Walker Peters are dropped to the bench and Kanté starts in midfield with Joel Veltman returning at right back.
At least there’s a better look to the attack with Pablo and Piroe both playing from the off.
The only plus point from the tinkering is that, if the starting eleven takes us by surprise, it will most certainly do the same for the opposition!
West Ham United:
Hermansen | Veltman, Mavropanos, Kilman, Morato | Bowen (c) Engels, Kanté, Solomon | Pablo, Piroe
Our Score Predictions:
Having all failed to predict correctly the QPR draw last Friday, it is a chastened quartet of Claret and Hugh writers who produce their score predictions this week:
Gonzo 2- 0 West Ham win
Martin 3-1 West Ham win
Sean 2 – 0 West Ham win
Matt 1 – 0 West Ham win
The game is live on Sky tonight – If you don’t have access to subscription TV, I’d recommend spending the 90 minutes following it with Geo on Hammers Chat’s You Tube watch along. It is many things (and with a warning that you may learn a few choice new words) .. but it is never, ever dull.
We’ll be back after with Gonzo’s player ratings and my own ‘final whistle -first impressions’ article, my guaranteed 100% totally unbiased, emotion-free, carefully considered -not – first thoughts at the end of the game. COYI!
I think he had to tinker Martin, because his starting line up last game was so poor
I wanted to see Pablo and Kante as Lincoln are physical and we need to match that. What we need now is a high tempo start so as we don’t end up playing catch up.
We are capable of beating them soundly but we’re also quite capable of going 2-0 down and it being really difficult.
I’ll go with 2-1 to us
I AGREE WITH STARTING 11. DROPPED PLAYERS WILL COME BACK BUT NUMBER OF GAMES IN THIS DIVISION MEANS MORE THAN EVER THAT PLAYERS NEED RESTING AND NONE OF RESTED CAN COMPLAIN
Nuno has to rotate due to the number of games, not necessarily tinkering, but necessary to keep the players fresh
West Ham3 1
After being hooked at half-time in successive games Walker-Peters dropped for Veltman makes sense and after his heroics against Millwall I feel that Kante deserves to start
C&H also suggested that Soucek be dropped to the bench
So all in all I think that “tinkerman is at it again” is a bit harsh
COYI – Pablo to get his first league goal and Piroe to get a brace