West Ham can finally nail down the London Stadium as their home with a win over Chelsea on Wednesday.
And I think given the confidence currently running through the team – AND THE FANS – we will see the boys do it…possibly after extra time.
Chelsea will come with a much changed team and I don’t think the often painful Diego Costa will play a part which will give the fans a chance of assessing Michy Batshuayi who was apparently close to signing for us.
Expect to see John Terry and Cesc Fabregas, Oscar and the like – a second string Chelsea which is probably capable of finishing mid table in the PL.
With the passions stirred up by the local derby and our fans giving it the lot I think we will get over the line and nail once and for all the so called London Stadium bogey.
For us, this is an opportunity to experiment with a false number 9. Simone Zaza is giving us nothing and it’s creating a problem through the team.
Things are slow because they don’t know whether he will win things in the air, hold and link play, make the right pass, get on goal or what. As a result they look around for other options and things slow down.
I’d like to see Antonio or Lanzini in there – clever players whose pace and movement can distract and drag players out of position and create space for the likes of Dimi or Mark to jump into.
This is why Sakho is such a key member of the team – he does all of that but also has the ability to score goals as well. Roll on his return.
I expect Slav will to make changes and I wouldn’t be surprised to see James Collins (above) return but the manager is hard to read so we’ll have to wait and see.
But our confidence is on the rise and free of PL anxieties I expect us to play with a lot more freedom.
Although it’s going to be tight, I’m tipping an Irons win for this and determined to make it a hat-trick of wins which would see confidence absolutely soar.
I’ve got to say, Rosie, I hope you’re right. With due respect to our previousl oponents, it’s the first ‘big’ game and sure to be a baptism of fire. I’m more upbeat about Zaza though. I love his work rate and I think that his ‘E’ for effort is something that has been sorely lacking for many games. Watford embarassed us by just wanting it more. Would Troy Deany get in our team? Probably not, but you can’t fault his commitment, and like last year when we were beaten at home by Leicester & Bournemouth, we’ve lost games we deserved to lose. I like Zaza’s link up play. An on form Anontio is unstoppable. Lanzini has magic in his boots and, of course, We’ve Got Payet! We have a team that can beat anyone on it’s day… it will just be down to who wants it more. Thanks for your thoughts, Rosie!
Antonio had a bit of an off day against Sunderland, nothing he did came off and I heard he came off with a minor injury – Slav played him as a central attacker against Middlesbrough and I thought he did pretty well, his energy, strength and enthusiasm could upset a questionable Chelsea defence – so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring Antonio in for Zaza and play Feghouli on the right.