I have a vague recollection that there was a post somewhere where a West Ham player was saying they are going to rip us a new one as he watched us against Wolves. Well I watched the 1st half of the Wolves match and was thinking 'why aren’t Wolves ripping us a new one? Well turned out ok in the end. So normal prediction!
Arsenal vs Spurs (Arsenal had C/L on Wednesday night)
Liverpool vs West Ham (both played Thursday night)
Brighton vs Bournemouth (Brighton played Thursday night)
Chelsea vs Villa (Villa played Thursday night)
Sheffield vs Newcastle (Newcastle played C/L on Tuesday so could have been played on Saturday)
Arsenal v. Spurs is very often a Sunday match, good television draw and the police prefer it. But I had not picked up on the fact that three of them had EL teams. Credit to Brighton’s recent arc that when I quickly scanned it, the fact that they are in Europe did not register.
As for the fact that it is Villa, not Chelsea, that is in Europe…
The police actually prefer Arsenal v Spurs to be the Saturday lunchtime kick off as it means pubs will only be open for a short time before the fans start making their way to the stadium so less time for them to get too pissed up.
The problem is that historically one if not both have been involved in European competitions so it makes it hard to get them playing the Saturday lunch time hence why the police have allowed the game to go ahead on Sundays (it was only in the mid 90’s that pubs were able to open on Sunday for the full day)
Were West Ham essentially at full strength last night?
I’m probably going to be pushing it to make it back for this one. It’s my son’s Birthday party up in Bremen the night before so I’ll be pushing it to get back on time.
Gakpo and Jota perform better when coming off the bench. There’s enough recovery time for whoever started on Thursday. I feel we should go with our strongest available lineup.
I’m going be a bit controversial but is Darwin Nunez in our best 11.
Perhaps on the Newcastle game but not on the last two. It’s eithier he is shit sell him or he is amazing he starts before any other and it’s not as clear as any of those opinions.