2 min: Emile Krafth is at full-back in the Premier League for the first time in ages. Newcastle are seeking to get Anthony Gordon on the ball.
1 min: Nuno stands in his usual vigil position, the bubbles streaming past his shrouded form. Impassive as ever. Kick-off is here. But there are quite a few empty seats in the stands.
Game faces on, bubbles being blown, we are almost go at the London Stadium.
Freddie Potts, making his Premier League debut today, is the son of Steve Potts, long-serving Hammers defender, Mr Versatility, and American-born in Connecticut, Hartford, the insurance capital of America. Maybe it was the AVCO insurance that attracted Steve to the Hammers, who was a decent centre-back despite being not the tallest.
His elder son Dan, a long-serving Luton player, also played a couple of games in the Premier League for the Hammers back in 2013; I recall him getting a nasty head injury at Arsenal one time when he was just 18. Freddie, though, is a midfielder of the West Ham model, the Mark Noble, Alan Dickens type. He’s 22 and has been on loan at Wycombe and Portsmouth.
Eddie Howe has been speaking about Callum Wilson, a useful player for him at Bournemouth and Newcastle: “He is still the same person today as he was at the beginning of his career, so for all those reasons and seeing how hard he has worked at his game, he is absolutely right up there.”
Chris Paraskevas is in: “G’day J.B. Hope you’re well! Just ticked over midnight and I’m living the dream: approximately 0 pages written out of a 10-page assignment - due date: this afternoon. I’m hoping for a clinical, professional, uncomplicated win here to give me an academic / life boost, but we all know when Calum Wilson woke up this morning, there was a big red circle around this fixture on his wall calendar (...that’s right, I’m suggesting he still rocks a physical calendar in 2025). A real shame (for Newcastle fans) that West Ham’s central defensive rock ‘Dino’ Mavropanos is missing, by the way.”
Ian Sargeant gets in touch: “As the Jubilee Line tube pulls into Stratford for the second game of my weekend, I’m not holding out much hope for my beloved Hammers. Hopefully the inverted full backs experiment will be ditched-but we are threadbare on the bench compared to our opponents. After the massive high of yesterday (a 96th minute away derby winner at Maidstone for Tonbridge Angels), where every one of the Angels left everything on the pitch, another abject effortless home performance from West Ham and things will turn ugly. There’s supposed to be a sit-in afterwards. One wag has said its been organised by the board to keep people in the ground longer than 70 minutes. We will see...”
Neither team are exactly where they’d like to be.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Brentford | 10 | -2 | 13 |
| 13 | Newcastle | 9 | 1 | 12 |
| 14 | Fulham | 10 | -2 | 11 |
| 18 | Nottm Forest | 10 | -12 | 6 |
| 19 | West Ham | 9 | -13 | 4 |
| 20 | Wolverhampton | 10 | -15 | 2 |
Newcastle have not won an away game in the Premier League since April. Here’s what Eddie Howe had to say in his Friday news conference. “It would be huge for us and I think it is only with back-to-back wins, if you look at the league table, that we are going to propel ourselves back up. It’s so tight. There are a lot of teams congested around where we are and you are looking for one positive result to try and elevate you. So this is a big game for us. All games in the Premier League are important, but as we go to the next international break the next two [at West Ham and Brentford] are huge.”
Some comments from Jarod Bowen, whose job this season has mainly been fronting up post-match, in the match day programme. “We need to really pull our fingers out now. We’re in trouble now. We have not played great, but we have got results when we have all been together.” Ooof.
Word is that Nuno is playing a back four for the Hammers. Jacob Steinberg’s j’accuse of the absolute state of West Ham is a rare old paintstripping.
Yet another switcheroo from the Nuno selection tombola. Callum Wilson lines up against the club he departed in the summer; the Hammers will have a striker, at last. Mateus Fernandes, who scored v Leeds, and Freddie Potts, who impressed, in place of Tomas Soucek and Andy Irving, who didn’t. Ollie Scarles has an injury.
That’s a strong Newcastle team, with their midfield trio back together. Eddie Howe has made six changes from the defeat of Tottenham in midweek. Nick Pope, Sven Botman, Joelinton, Anthony Gordon, Jacob Murphy, and Bruno Guimaraes all come in.
West Ham: Areola, Wan-Bissaka, Todibo, Kilman, Diouf, Potts, Fernandes, Paqueta, Bowen, Wilson, Summerville. Subs: Hermansen, Walker-Peters, Igor, Mayers, Rodriguez, Magassa, Irving, Luis Guilherme, Soucek
Newcastle: Pope, Krafth, Thiaw, Botman, Burn, Tonali, Guimaraes, Joelinton, Murphy, Woltemade, Gordon Subs: Ramsdale, Hall, Schar, Barnes, Osula, Elanga, Ramsey, Miley
Last Friday at the London Stadium was a miserable affair, well beaten by Leeds. Nuno Espirito Santo is finding life just as difficult as Graham Potter did. Maybe it’s the club after all, and there’s many a Hammers fan would agree with that. Wolves have taken steps, in sacking Vitor Pereira when the button has already been pushed on Potter, to little avail. Newcastle are having troubles of their own, inconsistency their main issue, the issues of balancing the Champions League with the Premier League taking their toll. Still, it could be worse, they could be West Ham.
Kick-off at 2pm UK time. Join me.