Lincoln City Match Preview

West Ham United beat newly-promoted Bolton Wanderers last month and tonight, they will be looking to claim the scalp of another of the division’s newcomers, as they make the trip to The ProAmpac Stadium to face last season’s Sky Bet League One title winners Lincoln City.

The Hammers may have won their first ever game at The Toughsheet Community Stadium and ended Wrexham’s unbeaten away run last month but, they didn’t make the desired start to October, as they unfortunately failed to cement maximum points at home to Queens Park Rangers on Friday night, as Julien Stéphan’s side went back across the capital with a point.

Having faced three successive home games in the Sky Bet Championship at the start of September, Nuno Espírito Santo’s men now face back-to-back away league games for the first time this season. With Middlesbrough, Swansea City, Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion all winning on Tuesday, it is vital that the Hammers stay in touch with the chasing pack here, given that they face a trip to South Wales on Saturday afternoon.

Remarkably, this is the first time that the team will have ventured outside of London for over a month and they will want to keep their own unbeaten away record intact, as they look to get back to winning ways.

The visitors should be the fresher of the two sides going into the encounter, given that they have had an extra day’s preparation.

The East Londoners will surely be looking to replicate the outcome of their Carabao Cup third-round success here back in September 2023, while they were under the stewardship of David Moyes having secured a 1-0 triumph, thanks to Tomáš Souček getting the only goal. That victory helped set up a fourth-round tie at home to Arsenal.

A familiar face to the ever-loyal fan base occupies the home dugout these days, as their former midfielder Chris Cohen took over in a joint managership role alongside Tom Shaw when previous Head-Coach Michael Skubala left the club for Bristol City in the summer.

It seems that these two sides had identical records between 29 August and 19 September, as tonight’s hosts also went five league games unbeaten. However, with Espírito Santo’s side looking to atone for Friday night’s slip and extend a run that has not seen them lose since the home defeat to Charlton Athletic back on 22 August, they could well suffer successive defeats after losing heavily to Sheffield United four days ago.

With the action continuing to come thick and fast, changes may once again be made by the Portuguese here. Whilst Souček will be hopeful of building on his first start of the season and fresh from signing a new contract until the summer of 2028 on Tuesday, he may drop to the bench in favour of Joël Piroe. Mohamadou Kanté is in line to return after serving his one-match ban.

Defender Joël Veltman could also come into the starting line-up for Kyle Walker-Peters, while Edvin Austbø and Pablo Felipe are also pushing for starts.

As per Friday’s match, this encounter kicks off at 8pm with Sky Sports again providing live coverage from 7:30pm. The referee is Andrew Kitchen.