WHZ View: Predicted West Ham starting XI v Spurs
West Ham host London rivals Tottenham in the Premier League on Sunday as both teams remain in the hunt for the European places.
The Hammers will be aiming to open up a nine-point gap over Mourinho’s men, and will be confident having won 3-0 on Monday to Sheffield United.
Spurs have struggled in the league as of late. They’ve lost four of their last five Premier League matches and have dropped to ninth in the table. Thursday’s 4-1 win over Austrian side Wolfsberg in Budapest should lift morale, however.
With that in mind, West Ham Zone predicts David Moyes to name the following XI for the clash at the London Stadium.
In goal will be our number one, Lukasz Fabianski. He was fantastic again in our victory last week, and will play a big role if we’re to win this weekend.
A back three should consist of Craig Dawson, Issa Diop and Aaron Cresswell. Diop made a scoring return to the team on Monday as we kept our ninth league clean sheet of 2020/21. Cresswell notched his eighth assist of the season, the most of any defender in the top-flight.
We expect Vladimir Coufal to line up on the right, and academy graduate Ben Johnson on the left flank. Johnson was rewarded for his FA Cup performance with a start in the last league game, and again performed very well.
In the centre of midfield will be the pairing of Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek. Rice scored his first goal of the season in our last game, whilst Soucek leads the goals chart with eight for the Hammers.
We expect Jarrod Bowen to move back to right-wing after playing very well as a centre forward last time out. On the left-wing will be the menacing Jesse Lingard, a real fan favourite already.
Given Moyes’ press conference comments, we expect Michail Antonio to lead the line against Spurs. His return to the side would be a massive boost and will hopefully lead us to our 13th win of the campaign.
In other West Ham news, Frank McAvennie has praised youngster Ben Johnson.