Burnley Match Preview

After three games on the road in all competitions, West Ham United now face another busy week, starting with the visit of Burnley this afternoon.

The Hammers have been tenth in the table since before the 3-0 defeat at Chelsea on December 21 and will hope to build on their good start to the New Year.

This will be the first time that the East Londoners have been involved in a 3pm kick-off since the 1-0 derby defeat at Arsenal back on 7 March.

David Moyes will be keen to claim victory against the Clarets, as the visitors have won this fixture on each of the two occasions that he has managed in East London. Sean Dyche’s men inflicted a 3-0 defeat in March 2018, before the Scot was perhaps unfortunate to come out on the wrong side of a 1-0 scoreline last season.

With Burnley currently in sixteenth place in the Premier League table, he will see this as an ideal opportunity for his team to take advantage.

The hosts go into the game having also had one extra day to prepare, as their opponents were in action on Tuesday night when they suffered a late 1-0 home defeat to Manchester United.

Łukasz Fabiański will face a late fitness test to determine whether he can replace Darren Randolph in goal after recovering from a thigh strain, while Aaron Cresswell, Tomáš Souček, Pablo Fornals and Jarrod Bowen should all be restored to the starting line-up for this game after all were benched for Monday’s FA Cup third round tie with National League side Stockport County.

Manuel Lanzini and Andriy Yarmolenko will be two in particular that are pushing for starts, while Michail Antonio was involved in the majority of the encounter at Edgeley Park and will be looking to get more valuable gametime.

Fabián Balbuena faces a period of self-isolation, meaning Craig Dawson is set to finally make his home debut following his loan move from Watford in October.

The match will be televised with live coverage being screened by Amazon Prime Video from 2:30pm. The referee is Christopher Kavanagh.