**West Ham host Manchester United at London Stadium tomorrow night, and Nuno Espírito Santo has a big call to make**.
The Hammers kept just their second clean sheet of the season on Saturday against Burnley, the defence was solid, but Mads Hermansen also impressed between the sticks.
The Danish goalkeeper obviously hasn’t had a very good start in East London, he was dropped after just four PL matches at the start of the season because of his poor performances. He couldn’t deal with crosses, he didn’t make some saves he should have, to be honest, he was awful.
However, he was also in goal for our only other clean sheet this season too, so maybe he is the better option?
I’m unconvinced Nuno will believe that though, however. Ahead of the game, I thought was a good choice to play against Burnley, we probably weren’t expecting our goal to be peppered, and we were expecting to dominate the ball.
However, it didn’t really turn out like that, the Clarets had more of the ball than us and managed 18 shots. They also had a lot of corners where they were trying to catch him out. But they didn’t, Hermansen was solid between the sticks
However, I think a start against Manchester United might be a step too far. The Red Devils are in great form and I’m expecting us to have very little of the ball, which means the goalkeeper will be very busy and probably under a lot of pressure.
I’m not sure Hermansen is ready to deal with that. I guess there is only one way to find out, however, we can’t afford to take that risk with the position we’re in. We can’t afford to take a risk like that, Areola has been good, yes his distribution isn’t as good as Hermansen’s but the priority has to be keeping the ball out of the next
And simply, Alphonse Areola is the better man for that role, so he has to start on Tuesday night.