West Ham welcome Chelsea to London Stadium in a crunch cross-London derby clash in the race for Champions League football.
Victory would see West Ham remain fourth in the standings, whereas a win would see Chelsea remain top of the table for another matchweek.
Team News
Aaron Creswell could return for West Ham after missing Wednesday’s 1-1 draw against Brighton with a back injury.
Angelo Ogbonna remains absent with a knee injury.
Chelsea could welcome Reece James back into contention if the defender has recovered from a knock to his ankle, which forced him to miss Wednesday’s win at Watford.
N’Golo Kante (knee) and Trevoh Chalobah (hamstring) are doubts but Mateo Kovacic (hamstring) and Ben Chilwell (knee) are ruled out.
Stat Attack
- West Ham have won just two of their last seven league meetings against Chelsea (W2, D2, L3).
- Chelsea are unbeaten in three of their last five visits to the London Stadium (W2, D1, L2).
- Three of Chelsea’s four goals against West Ham were scored by strikers (Tammy Abraham x2 & Timo Werner x1).
- West Ham have scored four headed league goals this season with only one of those headers coming from a non-European player – Algeria’s Said Benrahma.
- Chelsea have kept five clean sheets in seven league matches away from Stamford Bridge this season.
Prediction
After struggling to find much firepower in their last two league matches, West Ham were certainly back to their best in midweek with superb attacking dominance yet struggled to clinically finish chances on top of harsh VAR decisions, despite defending well until a bicycle kick denied them a win.
Chelsea meanwhile were surprisingly messy in defence with some bizarre errors from Edouard Mendy in goal, although they did benefit from an unfortunate medical induced break early on which allowed them to reset for a clinical win but their defensive shambles cannot be repeated here.
Add in the extra buzz of a cross-London derby and this game could be a closely fought contest but if West Ham play like they did on Wednesday and Mendy is still a mess, I can see the Hammers getting a win here.
Prediction: West Ham 1-0 Chelsea
Result: West Ham 3-2 Chelsea