Coufal gets forward
06 mins: Lanzini and Ings, however, make the same run to the near post and miss Coufal’s cut-back entirely.
West Ham starting well
03 mins: Gent having to soak up an awful lot of pressure in the early stages, albeit without West Ham creating many clear cut chances.
Early free-kick wasted
02 mins: Emerson crosses from deep but puts too much on it and Ogbonna can’t quite get there.
Malik Ouzia at Ghelamco Arena
Only minutes until kick-off here and still plenty of empty seats around. The traffic around the ground was a nightmare so perhaps that has something to do with it but first impressions are that this is not going to be one of the more hostile away atmospheres West Ham have experienced on their European jolly.
Malik Ouzia at the Ghelamco Arena
Reflecting on some interesting West Ham team news…
Malik Ouzia at the Ghelamco Arena
A slight surprise at the strength – or weakness – of the team David Moyes has fielded here. I was expecting something close to full-strength, perhaps with a view to resting players next week ahead of Bournemouth if the job is done. A bit of a gamble.
How Declan Rice can secure Noble West Ham send-off and avoid tainted legacy
It was around this time last year that Mark Noble began to look, with a sharper focus, towards the end of his West Ham career and a farewell that seemed all upside.
The dream send-off, a ride off into the Andalusian sunset with the Europa League trophy strapped to the top of an old Cortina, never quite materialised. But as Noble rolled through the rituals of his final games in claret and blue, he was comforted by the idea that he was leaving his boyhood club in ruder health that at any point since his graduation from its academy almost 20 years earlier.
“I always felt a responsibility to get us out of the rubbish,” Noble said in one of his many exit interviews. “It’s a lot easier to leave on a good note.”
As he enters the final throes of his own West Ham career, Noble’s successor has no such luxury. Declan Rice has a dozen Premier League games left before he gets his wish of a move to a Champions League outfit, starting on Saturday against Southampton, that will decide whether or not the ship from which he leaps is sunken.
With each international break tends to come a reminder of why this season will be Rice’s last at the club, and the one just passed proved no exception. In Naples, against the same Italian midfield that dominated England in the Euro 2020 final, the 24-year-old was magnificent, picking up where he left off in a Three Lions shirt in Qatar, where his reputation was enhanced and £100million price-tag — whatever Graeme Souness thinks — justified.
Read Malik Ouzia’s full feature here!
Rice backs West Ham tactics change as summer signings left out
Declan Rice says West Ham’s dressing room was left “numb” by last week’s chastening defeat to Newcastle, but believes a return to their counter-attacking ways of old could be the key to the Hammers’ survival chances.
The Hammers were humiliated 5-1 by the Champions League-chasing Magpies at the London Stadium on Wednesday night, but bounced back with a vital 1-0 victory over Fulham at Craven Cottage this weekend.
Following on from last Sunday’s win against Southampton by the same scoreline, David Moyes’ side have taken six points from three games in the space of seven days and climbed to 13th in the Premier League table to at least temporarily ease relegation fears heading into this week’s Europa Conference League quarter-final against Gent.
Rice hailed his team-mates’ response to the Newcastle defeat, which came after Moyes made five changes to his lineup, including recalling experienced defenders Angelo Ogbonna, Aaron Cresswell and Vladimir Coufal, and switched to a 4-4-2 formation.
Read Rice’s full comments here!
