The Hammers come to Emirates Stadium on Saturday for our second London derby of the season. Unai Emery has been given leeway with the opening two fixtures, however, as we face a perennial mid table club that narrowly escaped relegation last season there will be higher expectations this weekend. Especially given the dismal start West Ham has had, losing their opening two matches with notably all around poor performances.
West Ham has brought in Manuel Pelligrini over the summer to replace David Moyes, who of course was with the club for less than a season after replacing Slaven Bilic. Despite Moyes helping keep West Ham from relegation, club owner David Sullivan decided to move for a higher profile manager. Pellegrini who has experience in The Premier League after spending three years with Manchester City and winning the title in 2014 left for the Chinese Super League in 2016, but has been lured back to England with a three year contract worth £10m per year. The contract makes him one of the highest paid managers in the country and is a statement of intent that West Ham want to push for a place in Europe.
In addition, they have brought in nine new players including of course two of our own, Jack Wilshere on a free transfer and Lucas Perez for a mere £4m. West Ham have a formidable squad with players such as Marko Arnoutovic, Javier Hernandez, Andriy Yarmolenko, Felipe Anderson, and Andy Carroll to name a few. Last season under Bilic there were also big expectations yet the team massively underachieved. Despite facing a relegation battle last season, with a new manager and new players this season many pundits have placed even greater expectations on the club, predicting West Ham could vie for a EUFA Cup spot.
Early on in Pellegrini’s last stint in the Premier League he won accolades including manager of the year and was generally praised for his attacking style of play. Manchester City broke records for reaching a century of goals at the earliest point in the season in 2014, and although the current West Ham squad cannot be compared with the players Pellegrini had at his disposal while at City, he does have a decent group of attacking options. But if the opening two games of the season are any gauge of the season to come, Pellegrini has his work cut out. An opening day loss at Anfield to a high flying Liverpool was perhaps no surprise, but the Hammers looked poor, unable to keep any shape and failed to find any real glimpses for optimism. This in comparison to our opening day defeat to City which too was expected, but there were moments to provide reassurance that the gunners could face lesser opposition with a better result. Last weekends loss to Chelsea was disappointing as the gunners spurned many good opportunities, but overall we did look capable of creating some good football. In general, Pellegrini favors free flowing attacking football tactics, and has not utilized a heavy defensive ‘park the bus’ game plan in the past, which could leave spaces for our forwards to exploit come Satruday.
I don’t see any big changes for the gunners this weekend. Emery will likely stick with a 4-2-3-1 formation in keeping with the first two outings. It is too early to change things up given acceptable performances against top level competition so far. The defence stays unchanged, with the real questions coming in the defensive midfield and central attacking midfield role. Although most criticism of the current squad surrounds the defence and lack of width, there is still a question mark over the spine of the team. Guendouzi has done well in both games and should retain his spot, but who will partner him is a coin toss. Neither Xhaka nor Torreira have excelled, so I will expect Emery will give Xhaka the nod for no reason other than he is more established in the side and Torreira joined the club late due to the World Cup. In the attacking central midfield I expect Ozil to get the call. He has underwhelmed so far, but given he is our highest paid player by far with three more years on his contract I think Emery will need to try and get the best out of him. Ozil’s critics have always argued he can go missing against top clubs, but against West Ham the expectations will be high for the German. Ramsey is still holding out on signing a new contract and is not a true creator, and so I think he will start on the bench again. Despite my hopes to see Lacazette in the starting line up with Aubameyang, Alex Iwobi did well on the left last week and so I think Emery will stick with him and the other goal scorer Mhkitaryan on the right to round out the midfield trio. I am a believer in playing players in their best positions rather than starting the best or most expensive eleven, but having said that I do think we would benefit if Emery could find some way to fit both Auba and Lacazette into the team.
Arsenal and West Ham are parallel clubs at the moment with new managers and both clubs in a rebuilding phase, so Emery will not have a free pass for this one. This weekend there will be real pressure on him to win. Pellegrini too will be feeling the need to get a result and with some decent players in his squad, really the Hammers just need things to click in order to give Arsenal some real problems. Regardless, I will tip Arsenal to hammer the Hammers.
