Crystal Palace Match Preview
Last season, there were no Premier League matches from mid-November until Boxing Day but this year, it’s back to a full month of fixtures in December and next up for West Ham United is a home game with Crystal Palace this afternoon.
It would be fair to say that the Hammers are in good form at present and they will look to make it a fourth win in all competitions if they were to achieve victory here.
David Moyes’ side lost their last London derby in the league when they surrendered a 2-1 advantage to come out on the wrong end of a 3-2 defeat to Brentford at The Gtech Community Stadium last month.
On the same day that the East Londoners suffered the narrow loss to the Bees, the Eagles notched up their last victory, courtesy of a 2-0 success at newly-promoted Burnley. The hosts will want to extend that losing run for at least one more game if they can!!!
With West Ham having had a game in Serbia already this week, it may give Hodgson’s men an edge going into the game, given that they have had a full week to prepare following the 2-1 defeat to newly-promoted Luton Town in their last away game eight days ago.
Moyes will hope that Vladimír Coufal, Jarrod Bowen, Edson Álvarez and Mohammed Kudus are all available after they missed the encounter three days ago which guaranteed that European football will return to Stratford early next year. Maxwel Cornet may get a rare top-flight start after he sent in the cross that set up Tomáš Souček’s late winner against FK TSC Bačka Topola.
The action gets underway at 2pm and live coverage will be screened by Sky Sports from 1pm. The referee is Michael Oliver.