Football – England – Premier League
Saturday 16th August 2014 – Kickoff: 1500hrs
West Ham manager Sam Allardyce knows he must improve upon his team’s playing style if he’s to win over the fans this season, and this means outplaying tottenham in their first match of the new Premiership season – difficult.
His task is made that much harder with the loss of striker Andy Carroll through injury, but new signing Enner Valencia who had a great World Cup in Brazil with Ecuador is expected to lead the line today.
The Hammers secured their Premiership safety last season towards the end of January and into February as they went unbeaten for five matches (winning four of them) and getting a point away at Chelsea, but the four consecutive wins over Swansea City, Aston Villa, Norwich City and Southampton went to waste as they ended their campaign with five defeats from their last six.
Interestingly, their one win during this poor final run was a 2-0 home win over today’s opponents Tottenham, but you’d probably have to question Tottenham’s mind-set given the internal squabbles between then manager Tim Sherwood and chairman Daniel Levy amidst rumours that Spurs were in discussions with Southampton manager Mauricio Pochettino.
Onto Tottenham then, and indeed, former Saints boss Pochettino has since been installed at White Hart Lane as the London club chase a European spot in an aim to go one better this time around. It looks like Everton and Arsenal may well be their closest rivals to preventing them a tilt at Europe but that’s a long way off yet.
With the Sherwood saga now behind them, Tottenham have got down to business and have been impressive in their pre-season matches with four wins on the trot over Toronto and Chicago Fire on their US tour, along with back-to-back domestic wins over Celtic and Schalke 04.
West Ham are expected to do enough against the teams around them in the mid to lower half of the division while Tottenham will be quietly confident they can kick on under new manager Pochettino. The Hammers with goalscoring midfielder Kevin Nolan and Spurs with saluting Adebayor, there should be at least a couple of goals in this one, and I’ll back both teams to find the net here this afternoon. By the way, West Ham have won the last three encounters against Tottenham. Could be a 1-1 draw.
Pick: Both teams to score – Yes @ 1.80 Coral
