Make no bones about it, West Ham are in for a scrap tomorrow. Nuno knows it, his West Ham players know it and the fan base is looking forward to to it. Providing, that is, events on the pitch make the headlines after the history of this fixture has attracted so much media attention in the week leading unto the game.
As West Ham’s coach made pretty clear:
“Of course, it’s a different game from all the others. It’s a special game, the atmosphere is going to be different, and there’s big expectation from both sets of fans.
We know that ultimately things are going to be decided on the pitch, so what we want is for our players to be focused, to ignore the noise and play the game.”
Making it very clear where he sees the threat from Millwall, West Ham’s head coach emphasised the physicality which his players can expect tomorrow – especially early on – in what is likely to be a fairly spicy derby game. The Portuguese manager made it clear that the Lions will pose a threat from every dead ball, for which his team needs to be prepared:
“They have a very good team. They have good players, and they’re a physical team who are very dominant at set-pieces.
We are aware that they have quality, and that we’re going to have to be switched on to try and contain them, but at the same time we need to impose our game on them, compete well and be comfortable with the aspects of the game that we know we can do well.“
Few West Ham fans will expect another addition to the ‘clean sheet’ tally given their own side’s propensity to give away cheap goals.
However the Hammers’ goal scoring threat should see them over the line, providing they follow their manager’s advice and just ‘play the game‘ not the occasion. Hammers to come away with a 3-1 win I’d say: Going behind within the first 15 minutes though, as is becoming the norm these days, is only to be expected.
I am going to go for winning 4-0 weathering the early storm then grinding it out and overcoming them with late goals.