**West Ham manager Nuno Espírito Santo has in my opinion picked the best team to face Manchester City this afternoon.**
Many Hammers fans were worried coming into this game, especially to see the starting lineup and I was one of those.
However after seeing the lineups announced from the official website, my worries have slightly decreased about this game. No, I still don’t think we’ll win against a great City side, but I do think we can give them a game now.
With Diouf and Wan-Bissaka away at the African Cup of Nations, I was worried to see what Nuno would do with the team, especially the wide defenders.
However, it looks like he’s gone with the sensible option and the one that everyone wanted. Kyle Walker-Peter’s and Ollie Scarles come into the replace the African defenders.
Hopefully this is KWP on the right and Scarles on his preferred left side, when Nuno played swapped them and Scarles played as an inverted full-back, it just didn’t work out. So let’s hope he’s not going to try that out again today.
Starting XI: Areola; Walker Peters, Kilman, Todibo, Scarles; Magassa, Potts, Fernandes; Bowen, Paqueta, Summerville.
There is two picks in the starting XI that a lot of fans might disagree with. The first is going to be Max Kilman, but to be honest I’m not that bothered as I don’t think Mavropanos has been great since he’s returned either. I think Kilman is the better of the two options for today’s game.
As for Paqueta, a lot of Hammers fans want to see the Brazilian dropped for today. And to be honest, ideally, so would I. But if it was pretty much any other team in the league, apart from maybe Arsenal, I would start Callum Wilson.
But he’s just not going to get involved against City at the Etihad, I’d rather start Paqueta and bring Wilson off the bench to save him to be fit and ready to play from the start against Fulham at the London Stadium on the 27th.
To be expecting a loss and looking ahead to the next winnable game isn’t great at this stage of the season, but we have to be realistic. But anyway, to be honest, I think Paqueta up front will be of more use to us today against Pep’s city anyway.
Other than the players and positions brought up, the team has no arguments and Nuno has picked well.
As for the bench, it’s sad not to see George Earthy on there again, it looks like he’s edging ever closer to the exit. So again, there is no real game changers on the bench, Wilson could be impactful as well as Soucek in the right circumstances. However, some pace and creativity would really help us right now and we just don’t have that.
Let’s hope we can keep the score level as long as possible and hit them on the counter, who knows maybe we can get a shock result.