The Hanmmers travel to the Potteries this weekend for a tough away match at Stoke City. Stoke can probably consider themselves safe in the Premier league, sitting at 12th as they are but will be looking for 3 more points to cement that.
The Hammers on the other hand are still pushing for a European place. I want to do another post on whether we should be pushing for Europe, but I do have concerns about the depth of our squad to deal with it. More importantly for some is for the second season running finishing above our rivals Spurs. Speaking to Spurs fans, they consider this the weekend that they will be climb above us, with them facing West Brom at home and us with this tricky match.
However, there is no reason why we can't push for 3 points here. We gave Villa a tough game a couple of weeks ago and although we are still decimated by injuries, we're still hard to beat. Stoke play a failry open game and this could benefit us and allow us hit them on the counter attack.
Stoke team news: Good news is that Beattie is struggling, he's a decent player and with 6 goals in 12 games is pretty key for them, he may not make it on Saturday. Andy Wilkinson is out. Matthew Etherington is set to face his old club.
West Ham team news: Squad will be unchanged from that which faced Chelsea. Jack Collison is back in full training and though not ready for this game, may make an appearance before the end of the season.
I'd like to see us line up like this;
Green
Illunga - Upson - Tomkins - Neill
Stanislas - Dyer - Kovac - LBM
Tristan - Di Michele
Bench: Lastuvka, Savio, Sears, Noble, Spector, N'Gala, Payne
I imagine Zola will start with Noble rather than Dyer, but I'd like to see Kieron get more of a run out and perhaps Noble could do with a rest.
This team is perfectly capable of getting a result, and I'm going for us to sneak it 2-1. Fancy a punt? Skybet will give you 11/1 for that result, click the banner below for more. Come on you Irons!!!!
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