West Ham host Chelsea in a massive London derby at the weekend and they are not expected to have much joy against the champions. Antonio Conte’s men have won six of their last seven games to move up to third in the table. During that time West Ham have sacked Slaven Bilic, brought in David Moyes and still not won a game. The last time the Hammers won a league game was September and that came against Swansea, who are now bottom of the table. Their only other victory win came against newly promoted Huddersfield, the smallest club to play in the Premiership in two decades. There is not much hope then as they prepare to face the might of Chelsea, but there are a few reasons why this might just be West Ham’s afternoon.
First up, Chelsea will be tired from their midweek exertions against a very physical Atletico Madrid side in the Champions League. Secondly, the Blues have suffered some surprising results against teams they were expected to destroy this season. They lost to Burnley on the opening day and also tasted defeat against Crystal Palace, another team with only two wins to their name this season. There is a sense that Chelsea sometimes underestimate the opposition and fall victim to overconfidence. Finally, West Ham’s players should take a great dollop of encouragement from the nature of their defeat against Man City last weekend.
City have now made it 14 wins in a row, they are unbeaten all season and just one team have taken points off them all season. That was Everton, who earned a 1-1 draw on the opening day of the season. Since then Man City have beaten all comers. They have scored 46 goals in 15 games, an average of more than three per match, and only conceded 10 times. West Ham were unfortunate not to get a result against City at The Etihad last weekend. They led at half-time through Angelo Ogbonna’s strike, and looked as though they would hold on for a point after Nicolas Otamendi’s equaliser, but they succumbed to a late winner from David Silva. Still, the Hammers ran the champions elect very closely and there were signs that Moyes has started to make them harder to play against.
They are huge underdogs in the upcoming clash with Chelsea. Check reviews of Bookmaker to find the best odds and you will see that West Ham are as long as 6/1 to win it, despite being at home, while the draw is around 7/2. Chelsea have won five out of seven away games this season, but West Ham do not have a bad record in London derbies. They knocked Spurs out of the Carabao Cup earlier this season and have often run them close, while they have also gained some strong results against teams like Arsenal.
Their head to head record against Chelsea is actually pretty decent of late too. They beat them at home and drew with them at Stamford Bridge in 2015/16. Last season they lost twice to the Blues in the league but knocked them out of the league cup, so they should not be frightened of Chelsea. Next up it is Arsenal and they are huge underdogs in that one too. If the Hammers take zero points, as predicted, from those two games, they can expect to find themselves bottom of the table as Christmas Day approaches and that would be a terrifying prospect. Moyes needs to start earning his wages pretty sharpish. West Ham have still conceded more goals than any other team in the league this season and he needs to get them more confident, more organised and better drilled. A couple more encouraging performances against big six teams would have a positive impact on the team, but heavy defeats would set a bad tone for the rest of the season and that would be hard to overcome.
