Match Thread: West Ham United vs Wolves

Kilman's Challenge
By Wolves
October 1 2022

Wolves travel to the first of this month's London based meetings today for a very interesting away fixture at the London Stadium. After both teams suffered defeats before the international break, West Ham and Wolves sit third and fourth from bottom of the League respectively, having only scored three goals each so far, and Wolves will be keen to end the day with West Ham remaining below them.

The thrust of today from Wolves persepective is definitely about scoring goals and winning points, but will essentially be about team selection in light of the high rate of unavailability of players for Bruno Lage to choose from. The only parts of the team where he doesn't have selection problems are in goal and midfield. Following his sending off for a calamitous challenge on Jack Grealish, Nathan Collins will be missing from defence for the next three games. Bruno will no doubt have to put added responsibility on to Max Kilman to marshall the defence. It remains to be seen whether he will move to the right side with the marginally more experienced Toti Gomez slotting into the left side, or whether newboy Jerson Marquez will be given his fuill debut on the right. There has even been talk of Jonny Castro Otto slotting into defence, with Semedo back in place at wing back. The other question will be whether there is a role in the team for loan signing Boubacar Traore in defence or midfield.

Up front he has an equally difficult dilemna, with Sasa Kalajdzic now out for several months, Raul Jimenez still rehabilitating from a groin injury, and Hee Chan Hwang returning from International duty with an adductor muscle strain. It is largely presumed to be too early for new signing Diego Costa to make a start, but we can perhaps expect to see an apearance from the bench for him. This will mean a striking line-up of Guedes, Podence, Neto or Traore - who, after being unavailable for the Man City game due to injury is now fit and ready to start.

West Ham may be without Antonio as he played for Jamaica on Wednesday, but they have the Internationally in-form Scamacca ready to replace him. Club Captain Declan Rice also played two 90 minute games for England during the break so it could be wondered how fit he will be to start. Earlier this year Wolves suffered a 1 - 0 defeat at West Ham with Thomas Soucek scoring an scrappy goal, but he has strggled to score so far this season.

The game will kick off at 5:30pm and will be screened by Sky TV. Our match referee will be Paul Tierney with Peter Bankes on VAR Duty.

This board will endeavour to provide regular updates on the progress of the match for those unable to follow it, and members are encouraged to post their own observations and join in the conversation.

Match Thread: West Ham United vs Wolves

Posted by: Wolves (IP Logged)

Date: 01/10/2022 12:22

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022:10:12:23:10:27 by Cheshire wolf.