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A good record at West Ham shouldn’t undermine the tough task tomorrow

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo In what is becoming a bit of a habit for me at the moment, I thought I’d go an check out the situation on some of the West Ham forums this morning, to get a bit of a vibe check on the opposition fans in the run up to our game against them. Unlike in the Forest game, however, in which I read some of the comments and watched a couple of Fan TV videos, the stuff that I checked out had quite the overture of negativity in a few forums.

West Ham fans clearly haven’t been impressed with Lopetegui so far this season, some of their performances have underwhelmed and they were voicing it this week, despite the fact that they won up at Newcastle on Monday night.

I watched pockets of that game and I was impressed. There was an intensity at St James’ Park that I didn’t think West Ham had in them. They covered ground, they worked as a collective, compact unit and then sprung traps on the Geordies. They also time wasted and undertook in some ‘dark arts’ football that only we get hauled over the cards on, which was then amusing to see Newcastle fans so annoyed about, I have to say. The words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ absolutely come to mind.

But you would think that the performance, as well as the result, would be enough to get most of them excited at the prospect of scalping us this weekend. Not from what I’ve read. From the comments I saw there was about a 90% ratio of fans saying we’d win it. I can understand it when I look at the historical head-to-head at West Ham; their last win in the league was a 1-0 win in January 2019 in which a certain Declan Rice scored for them on 48 minutes. Before that you have to go back to 2006 to get the next win in the league, in which Marlon Harewood bagged an 89th minute winner as Arsene Wenger tasted one of his few defeats there.

Sure, we’ve had good times there and that’s a pretty good record, but recent memory – last season’s 6-0 hammering aside (EVERY pun intended) – has me thinking that these games have always been tight and always been tough. We will all be familiar with what happened in 2021 when we were 3-0 up and promptly contrived to draw the game 3-3. That was an example of a glass-jawed Arsenal team that I for one never want to see again (even though I know we are prone to those kinds of results occasionally in our history). In 2023 we also had the 2-2 draw after we’d scored two early goals too, so we have recent memories that will show that this game has plenty of difficulties about it for Arteta to be concerned enough with getting the right set up tomorrow, so I’m hoping we have ourselves fully prepared for this one.

We can ill afford another St James’ Park performance.

From a statistical perspective West Ham’s home form hasn’t been great for the first six games of the season. Two wins (United, in which they got a dodgy penalty, as well as Ipswich, who they battered to be fair), one draw (Everton, 0-0, in which their first shot on target wasn’t until they hit halftime), then three defeats (City, Villa and Chelsea – three good teams) have hardly been scintillating form but they’ve played some decent teams at home so maybe that explains their current position of 14th in the league.

From a playing style perspective they’re still ‘working things out’ under Lopetegui. They’ve got one of the oldest squad’s in the league behind Everton, they are a side who likes to take on players – explained when you look at the likes of Bowen and Kudus (not playing tomorrow because of suspension) – plus they tend to go a little longer. They’ve got the third highest number of clearances in the league behind Leicester and Brentford and behind Wolves they’ve made the second lowest live ball passes in the league. That tells me this is a West Ham side happy to lump the ball longer when they are defending a little deeper. They do like a big switch though; they’ve delivered the longest number in the league behind Liverpool, who are known for their diags to the like of Salah from deep, or Trent playing quarter back. Their passing type suggests this as well – They’re in the top five for long passes completed in the league behind Everton, Fulham, Brentford and Brighton. They’ve also got the fourth highest number of launched balls from the ‘keeper too, so expect there to be a game of duels needed to be won tomorrow evening from our defenders.

From a goalscoring perspective they’re about right for their league position and have an xG of 15.9 against an actual number of goals scored of 14, so they’ve averaged a goal a game so far, which tells me we will probably concede one against them. It’s just a case of whether we’ll manage to score more than that (or them) to win the game.

So we know the type of team we’re up against, it will just be a question on how we will set up to beat West Ham, which we won’t get any indication from Arteta on today, but we might come 4.30pm.

My main hope is that Gabriel is ok, because providing he’s fine, him and Saliba will relish the duel with Antonio. Then it becomes about how we break down a West Ham side who I think will set up similarly to Newcastle. In that game they tucked in and hit Newcastle with some sucker punches and I suspect the home fans won’t like it, but that’s what they’ll be looking to do. Draw Arsenal on to them, get space, then go longer to see if you can isolate Arsenal defenders on one-v-ones. We need to be ready for that.

The good news will be that we have a back line who would be ready for that, with Timber and Calafiori being full backs who will love a bit of a duel battle. Then as long as Big Gabi is good I’d be feeling more confident. No big Gabi and it’s probably Kiwior and with the way Gyokeres out-muscled him in the dying embers of the game on Tuesday night, you could see Antonio wanting to have a go at the Pole too if Big Gabi ain’t there.

We’ll see what Arteta says later and I’ll be back tomorrow for a look at how I think we’ll line up and where the big match ups will be.

Catch you all then.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.