West Ham make the short trip to north London on Saturday afternoon to take on arch rivals Tottenham.
It could be argued the international break came at the wrong time for the Hammers, after the 4-1 home victory over Ipswich Town. That victory ended a run of poor performances and poor results and, for arguably the first time, things appeared to be clicking.
A two week wait to build on that won’t have helped the squad in their attempts to continue to get used to Julen Lopetegui‘s style of play, but what better game than to show things are definitely moving in the right direction than Tottenham away in the Premier League.
On the flip side, Spurs went in the break having blown a 2-0 lead to lose 3-2 at Brighton and will have likely relished the chance to take stock and regroup ahead of this one.
There is a lot of high expectations at both clubs at the moment and given neither side has started the season in the way they would’ve liked, this particular London Derby has an extra bit of bite to it than usual.
Lopetegui’s plans for the game will have been hampered by a number of problems to have arisen from the international break – some good and some bad.
We’ll start with the bad. Edson Alvarez‘s exclusion from the starting line-up against Ipswich surprised many but it was expected that he would regain his place in midfield for the trip to Spurs. However, he played the full 90 minutes of Mexico’s final international fixture in the early hours of Wednesday morning, meaning he probably won’t be back at Rush Green until Friday, giving him just 24 hours to prepare.
With that in mind, there are question marks over his ability to be thrown straight into the starting XI this weekend. It’s a similar story with Michail Antonio, who played 83 minutes for Jamaica in the early hours of Tuesday morning, which will likely only give him 48 hours to prepare for Spurs.
The good news? Firstly, Konstantinos Mavropanos put in a solid display for Greece against England last weekend and that will have caught Lopetegui’s eye. Whether or not he did enough to replace Jean-Clair Todibo in the staring XI, given his impressive form of late, is another matter, but it’s a good dilemma for Lopetegui to have, knowing he has three in-form centre-backs.
And there’s the fact Jarrod Bowen wasn’t involved with England whatsoever, meaning he’s had two full weeks to work alongside Lopetegui at Rush Green. There is no doubt both will have found that incredibly helpful as they look to build on the performance against Ipswich.
So, here’s how we thing West Ham will line-up against Spurs on Saturday…
It’s an unchanged team to the one that thrashed Ipswich, which is probably the best scenario to be in given how well we played in that game.
Long term I would prefer to see Alvarez in there alongside Soucek, but I just don’t think he’ll have had enough time to recover after travelling back from Mexico to feature from the start this weekend.
That said, the players looked more comfortable both in and out of possession and if we can put in a similar showing this weekend, there might just be a chance of taking something away from north London for the second consecutive season.
