Under The Hammers

A game at the heavily scrutinised London Stadium on a day known for fires and explosions – what could possibly go wrong?  Today’s visitors are the mostly harmless Stoke City who after a disastrous start to the season come to London today unbeaten in their last 5 matches.  Known as the Potters after the eponymous boy wizard (itself is a reference to Stoke’s most famous ever player, wizard of the dribble, Stanley Matthews) the club is competing in their 9th consecutive Premier League campaign following the promotion in 2008 which ended a 23 year ‘spell’ in the wilderness.  When Stoke were relegated in 1985 they did so with a record low number of points for the 22 team, 3 points-a-win top flight.

“I would rather have us creating chances and waiting for a moment to convert them than not create them at all. We are disappointed with the Everton result but we are on a good path, we are there, and we are going to score goals.”

– Slaven Bilic

A game that we will be very much hoping to win as our theoretical easier run of games comes to halt just before yet another international break and a chance to do the Christmas shopping.  A few West Ham – Stoke connections that spring to mind are that Geoff Hurst played for both clubs, Lou Macari managed both and both were briefly owned by Icelandics at some point in their history.

Head to Head

Another close run head to head record that shows an emphasis on home victories with Stoke’s visits to the capital being as fruitless as our ventures to the north-westwards.  Two of their seven victories have, however, been in the last six encounters. History reveals a healthy goal haul from home games against the Potters which hopefully can be repeated this afternoon.

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Sequence
Home	40	20	13	7	70	35	DDLDWW
Away	41	11	8	22	43	62	LDLWLD
	81	31	21	29	113	97

Team News

Winston Reid is suspended  and injured although the latter might just be a convenient excuse to avoid travelling down under for two World Cup fixtures against New Caledonia.  Potential replacement Reece Oxford has also picked up an injury which opens the door for the more probable replacement James Collins and his silky passing skills.  With still no striker to speak of available our sources (I read it on the internet) suggest that there will be a return to the starting lineup for Andre Ayew with Edmilson Fernandes dropping out.  While welcoming Ayew’s return it would be disappointing for Fernandes, one of our better players last week, to be demoted to the bench.  Slav says the players now feel at home at the London Stadium but I get the impression that he is trying to convince himself that everything is going to be alright rather than anything else.

“We’re looking forward to every game we play now because we’re playing some good stuff now and we’re playing with confidence.”

– Mark Hughes

Stoke have Arnautovic missing through suspension with Shaqiri doubtful and a few other longer term injuries including Butland, Cameron and Johnson.  Danger men are Bony, who open his Stoke account last week against former club Swansea, and Joe Allen.

Man in the Middle

Andre Marriner from Birmingham is today’s top official.  This is his 7th Premier League game of the season during which time he has brandished 1 red and 24 yellow cards whilst at the same time missing Aguero’s elbow assault on Winston Reid at the Etihad.

Embed from Getty Images

I can honestly say that the game against Stoke is not the one that I look for when the fixtures schedule is released in the middle of June each year. In fact I think that when Tony Pulis was in charge, it was probably the game that I least looked forward to. I have never been a fan of watching Pulis’ teams play, and West Brom have now assumed the Stoke mantle for me. Perhaps many West Brom fans feel the same judging by the empty seating in last week’s game at the Hawthorns? Those fans who have been watching for a few years will probably remember the Rory Delap long throw tactic. Stoke would do all they could to attain throw-ins in the opposition half, and then Delap would spend an age drying the ball before launching a long throw into the penalty area, with his team mates blocking off defenders as if it were a game of American Football. Somehow they got away with it, and often went unpunished by referees.

But Stoke under Mark Hughes are different, although they still retain some players who play the game in the same way they did under Pulis, especially Shawcross and Walters. In my opinion Shawcross has always been one of the most over-rated central defenders in the Premier League, and I could never understand the clamour in the media to get him called up into the England squad. That appears to have died down in recent times though. He is one of those defenders often referred to as uncompromising, although I could think of other adjectives to describe his methods.

Last December at Upton Park the game ended goalless, but of all the 0-0 games I have ever seen this one was one of the best. Both sides played entertaining stuff and were applauded off at the finish. There were 34 shots in the game, of which we had 22, and there was a grandstand finish where we almost nicked the points. One of the reasons we didn’t win was the superlative goalkeeping of Jack Butland. He got injured playing for England in a later game, and has been out for a long time. I think they, and England, miss him

When I look back over the past fifty years or more I don’t have great memories of watching us play Stoke. At the Britannia Stadium, in the final game of last season we took the lead and had control of the game. We conceded an equaliser against the run of play and then lost the game right at the death. We pulverised them in the first half but only had a solitary goal at the interval for our endeavours. It should have been three or four with the game wrapped up. We missed stacks of chances, and Stoke cleared about four off the line. One was only an inch or so from being a goal but it just wasn’t going to be our day. In some ways we missed Payet, but we created so many chances it shouldn’t have mattered. We had more than twenty shots on goal to Stoke’s half a dozen.

Going back almost fifty years, in 1967-68 we were 3-0 up at half-time in a league game at Upton Park and we let Stoke back into the game to win 4-3. Two seasons later, almost to the day we were once again 3-0 up at half time, and Stoke fought back to draw 3-3 and were just denied a late winner with a shot that came back off the post! In 1971-72 we met them in the League Cup semi-final that went to four games that had everything (they didn’t have penalty shoot-outs in those days). We won the first leg away 2-1, but Stoke won 1-0 in the second leg at Upton Park when Gordon Banks saved a late-in-the-game Geoff Hurst penalty and it went to a replay. The first replay was drawn and we then lost an incredible second replay 3-2. I can also remember visiting their old stadium, the Victoria Ground in 1973. All I can recall is that a smallish crowd made a lot of noise, and we lost the game 2-0.

In some ways, their start to this season has mirrored our own. They began with a draw at Middlesbrough, and then lost four games in a row, conceding four goals in each of three of those fixtures. They followed this with two more draws, before a recent run of three consecutive victories, albeit against Sunderland, Hull and Swansea, the three teams currently occupying the relegation places. As I knew we were playing them this weekend I watched some of their 3-1 win over Swansea on the Monday night football on Sky. They looked quite impressive, especially Bony who scored twice, and Allen, who has scored four goals from midfield this season. Arnautovic will be missing serving a one match ban, whilst Shaqiri is a doubt for the game.

We haven’t actually beaten Stoke at home since March 2011 when our three goalscorers were Demba Ba, Da Costa, and Hitzlesperger. Where are those three ex-players now? The last time we did record a victory over them was in March 2013 when Jack Collison scored the only goal in the game at the Britannia. But since then we have played them six times in total, drawing three and losing three. Since returning to the Premier League our home record against them has been three draws and one loss, so it is about time we put an end to this run.

They currently sit in twelfth place in the table (to our seventeenth), but are only two points ahead of us, so a victory would take us above them, and we could in theory be in the top half of the table by Saturday evening if other results went our way, although this is unlikely. But with our difficult run of fixtures after the international break, three points would be most welcome, and I predict that we will win a tight game by the odd goal, perhaps 1-0 or 2-1.