Yesterday Manuel Pellegrini admitted that Mark Noble remains unavailable due to a calf injury while revealing that Felipe Anderson and Sebastien Haller remain serious injury doubts for Saturday after suffering knocks with them not training in the early part of the week.
Should Haller and Anderson both fail fitness tests then Pellegrini would be forced to drastically change his team, there is also a good chance that Aaron Cresswell could lose his place to Arthur Masuaku after a poor performance against Man City.
With all these factors in mind, this is my predicted line-up for Brighton.
Starting XI: Fabianski, Fredericks, Diop, Balbuena, Masuaku, Rice, Wilshere, Fornals, Lanzini, Yarmolenko, Antonio
Bench: Roberto, Ogbonna, Cresswell, Snodgrass, Hernandez, Ajeti, Zabaleta
The Hammers have not beaten Brighton since 2012 when they came away 6-0 winners in the Championship with a hat trick from Ricardo Vaz Te, one from Kevin Nolan, One from Carlton Cole and an own goal.
The last game ended a 2-2 draw at the London Stadium in January this year with Marko Arnautovic scoring both West Ham goals in a space of two minutes after Brighton were up two-nil in the space two minutes.
So we will definitely be without haller Anderson and noble after 1 game ..it does not bode well for the season…I wonder if m.p is still happy the squad ..Will we ever hAve a trouble free start to any season..it makes it even harder to take when most of us could see we are lacking a few quality players for back up in the squad.. If i m honest I thInk are wil! Struggle tomorrow especially after there start ..and like we all spoke in the summer these are the games that we need to win …it will be a very interesting weekend..
Pellegrini seems to believe an English captain is part of the West Ham way. This leaves Wilshere or Rice if Cresswell is omitted. Maybe he should take a look at Balbuena instead to organise the defence?
Pelligrini says we have the squad to compete , so let’s see , this is the acid test . COYI