Recent history makes this Saturday lunchgtimes’ fixture an exciting prospect at London Stadium. Gone are the days (I hope) of being put to the sword by a rampant, runaway Premier League-winning Chelsea.
Only seven games out of thirty three have been draws, and more to the point, both teams have new ccoaches, new players, systems – all of which leads me, most of you and some of the pro’s to predict a high scoring game. Danny Murphy on Thursday evening’s Talk Sport:
“If you’ve got Paqueta, Kudus, Bowen, it looks good. One thing about this game, as Chelsea have shown snippets of brilliance, is that it won’t be 0-0.” “I’m going to go 3-2 Chelsea.”
(Hey, Danny, I’d add, Hammers’ fans are hoping for a bit of ‘Summerville magic,’ too!)
Whilst we might disagree with the hopeful final outcome, we’d probably go with the high-scoring prophesy as neither defence seems yet watertight.
Rather than rely solely on pundits, I turned to a bit of tech: I do use the brilliant stats at footystats.org at the moment but there’s lots of on-line analysis available. It makes for interesting reading on current form:
*Out of 33 previous meetings, West Ham United have won 8 matches while Chelsea won 18: *7 matches between them have ended in a draw.
*West Ham United are in good home form while Chelsea are average away.
*Previous matches between West Ham United and Chelsea have averaged 2.58 goals while BTTS has happened 48% of the time
*So far this season in the Premier League, West Ham United have averaged 1.5 Points Per Game at ‘home’ matches and Chelsea 1.2 Points Per Game away.
So the stats tell a different message with a scoring-draw being the most likely points tally based on ‘average’. Would we be happy with that, Hammers?
As another 60+ years fan of WHU, I think I need some help. What am I missing here?
West Ham United are in good home form (Really? Played 2 Lost 2).
West Ham United have averaged 1.5 Points Per Game at ‘home’ matches (?*!#)
Have I lost the plot?
Oh how I wish for a win. But I am not convinced by the “new” West Ham. Over 66 years I have seen these expected positive developments come & go. – mostly without any long term improvement. This one seems to be the real thing – although it is taking a while to get going. I don’t think that it will get going in the Chelsea match; so, 2-4. Totally hope I am wrong.
Chelsea have outstanding players. But their defence isn’t that great . If we set up defensively it will play into their hands . Put them on the back foot. There vulnerable doing that .
No Martin, we wouldn’t be happy with another draw. Like you said, both teams have new ccoaches, new pplayers, ssystems and sstuttering sstarts. Ok, well, you didn’t actually quite say that but why let the facts get in the way of a windup!
I am really hoping that we can make a statement by, firstly, showing real positive intent with our starting lineup and, secondly, getting more goals than Chelsea. A draw would leave me more worried about our slow start. You know, playing to not lose instead of playing to win. Though I won’t mention the M word this time!
I’m just hoping – as I did last week – that we show the threesome up fromt that everyone wants to see, to show fast and scoring intent.. instead of Ant/Sou let down again I wanna see Kud/Bow/Sum for future – even if we lose it’d be better than starting with the donkeys
Just wondering if Danny Ings might get another chance at some stage in the game. He could turn out to be the Full-Ings if Fullkrug isn’t fit to play. But yes, agree that we all want to see those mentioned three up front, preferably with Paqueta central behind them. Come on Rodney, … er Loppy, you know it makes sense!
Fill-Ings worked well with JB last time out, good option for 20 mins if we need him.