West Ham United will play Chelsea in the Premier League at the London Stadium on Saturday, 4 December. Kick-off is at 12.30 pm local time.
Fourth plays top in this hotly contested London derby, where the two sets of fans have mutual antipathy.
For West Ham’s Kurt Zouma, it will be a chance to impress the team he left in the summer, while Hammers captain Declan Rice, a former Chelsea academy player, will have another opportunity to show his former club what they missed out on when they released him as a teenager.
It has been another season of progress for West Ham under David Moyes, whose team begins the weekend in the Champions League places, having already qualified for the knockout stages of the Europa League.
They have however, just hit a sticky patch. Successive away defeats at Wolves and Manchester City were followed by a midweek home match with Brighton, where they were forced to settle for a point, despite taking an early lead and playing against ten men for half of the second half.
On the same night, Chelsea were winning away at Watford. But, by Thomas Tuchel’s own admittance, they were lucky in the night. Tuchel will hope that record-signing Romelu Lukaku is fit to start this match. Lukaku has been absent for almost a month. While midfielders and defenders have scored the goals without him, there is a limit to how often they can be relied on to dig the team out of trouble.
Lukaku’s presence at both ends of the pitch may be needed in a match where set pieces have a big part to play. West Ham, in particular, will hope to exploit corners or free-kicks near the penalty box that come their way.
Prediction
Although West Ham have seen a slight dip in form recently, they will be aware that the least time one of the league leaders, Liverpool, came to their ground, they left with a bloody nose. The early kick-off may mean that the match may be slow to get going, but by the second half, this should develop into a full-blooded contest.
Neither side will want to lose so a draw may be the most likely outcome