Premier League
Spurs vs Hammers
Tottenham Hotspur vs West Ham United, 4.30pm GMT
A wildly inconsistent Tottenham Hotspur look to end a two-game losing run when they host West Ham United in Sunday’s Premier League London derby. The Lilywhites fell to a 1-0 defeat in their Champions League last-16 first leg with AC Milan in midweek, while David Moyes’s men most recently held Chelsea to a 1-1 draw.
This Derby comes at a strange time for both teams Spurs on a bit of a dip in form and West Ham seemingly turning a corner, so will the form book mater or will it go out the window.
Our Picks:
Over 2.5 Goals @1/1
Spurs win and both teams to score @3/1
Tottenham Hotspur have a good squad at their disposal but have struggled to impose themselves in the Premier League. The hosts are heavily reliant on the likes of Harry Kane and Heung-Min Son and will need their stalwarts to step up this weekend.
West Ham United have shown flashes of potential over the past month but are yet to hit their stride this season. Both teams have issues to address at the moment and could play out a draw in this fixture, but been a derby anything can happen we don’t like calling draws.
Team News:
For a brief moment, Tottenham’s fitness concerns had seemingly been extinguished, but Stellini must now work around the absences of four first-team regulars, namely ACL victim Rodrigo Bentancur following his season-ending injury in the loss to Leicester.
Yves Bissouma (ankle), Hugo Lloris (knee) and Ryan Sessegnon (hamstring) are also sidelined for a number of weeks, but a well-rested Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg will be primed to return to the XI after serving a Champions League ban at San Siro.
The performances of Pape Sarr and Oliver Skipp were silver linings in the defeat to Milan, but the latter may now be the one to make way for Hojbjerg, while Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski were found wanting in Italy and could find their spots under threat from Richarlison.
West Ham did not come out of last weekend’s fixtures unscathed either, as Lucas Paqueta was a first-half casualty against Chelsea with a recurrence of a shoulder injury, which will render him unavailable for this contest.
Nayef Aguerd was also an enforced withdrawal towards the end of that match with an adductor problem, but the Moroccan is still in with a chance of lining up this weekend – Ben Johnson or Aaron Cresswell, assuming the latter recovers from illness, could come into a rejigged defensive shape if not.
Tottenham Hotspur predicted starting 11:
Forster; Romero, Dier, Davies; Emerson, Sarr, Hojbjerg, Perisic; Richarlison, Kane, Son
West Ham United predicted starting 11:
Fabianski; Kehrer, Ogbonna, Cresswell; Coufal, Rice, Soucek, Emerson; Bowen, Antonio, Benrahma
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