The Premier League fixtures for the 2016/17 season have been announced and West Ham will start their campaign with a trip to London rivals Chelsea.
We know the game is still ages away and a lot can change between now and August 13th but that isn’t going to stop us from taking a look ahead to what will be an exciting game for Slaven Bilic and his men as they look to improve on a great 2015/16 league campaign.
Despite the Hammers finishing above Chelsea last season, William Hill have the Blues at 1/2 to win the game. The draw is priced at 10/3, with the Hammers the outsiders at 5/1.
The game will be the first competitive game in charge of Chelsea for Antonio Conte, the current Italian manager who’ll be taking charge at Stamford Bridge after the conclusion of Euro 2016.
That in itself could give West Ham a bit of an advantage as Bilic will have had his full focus, bar the odd bit of TV work, on West Ham whilst Conte has his attention on Italy. In fact, if Italy get to the final of Euro 2016, which could well happen looking at how well they played in their opening game against Belgium, Conte will only get around four weeks with his players to prepare for the game, and that’s if he doesn’t take a holiday of his own.
In terms of the make-up of both teams, well, if reports are to be believed, Chelsea will be hoping that Dimitri Payet is wearing all blue rather than claret and blue, but it seems implausible that West Ham will allow their star man to leave for a team in the same division.
Rather than losing players, West Ham seem more focused on adding strength to their own squad. They’ve already added Havard Nordtveit from Borussia Monchengladbach, and Sofiane Feghouli from Valencia and they are obviously in the market for a new striker too.
Chelsea have a lot of work to do, especially if they do plan on playing Conte’s favourite 3-5-2 formation. They obviously have a squad packed with quality and their fans will hope that a fresh start with a new manager will give some of the players a kick up the backside after they produced one of the worst title defences in history.
They are being linked to numerous players but with Conte away with Italy, they might need to wait to get recruits in, which again could give the Hammers an advantage in the first game.
Despite all of this, Chelsea are still a very good side with very good players and they’ll be keen to start well under their new manager, especially after how poorly the start of last season ended up going. While there are reasons to think that West Ham could get all three points in the opening game, it’s by no means going to be an easy game.
West Ham began their 2015/16 season with an amazing win against Arsenal at the Emirates and it would not be a massive surprise if they manage to get a similar result when they travel to Stamford Bridge on August 13th.
