Wolves v West Ham - Monday April 5th 20.:00

alderz

3 goal lead with Rice starting: 3-3
3 goal lead with Noble starting: 3-2

Solid

Lukerz

Even if Antonio is out, we can still play Lingard as a false 9, plus Bowen & Benrahma as other options. It’s a blow but it’s not impossible.

Fabianski
Dawson - Ogbonna - Cresswell
Coufal - Souček - Noble - Masuaku
Bowen - Lingard - Fornals

yoyo

( If Antonio is out ) We know Moyes likes a nippy centre forward. Bowen has a week to watch as many clips of Vardy and Ings as he can. If he can improve his consistency then they're the players his style is more similar to.

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Bowen has as many goals as Mane and only 2 less than Sterling

Think he's likely to fill in for Antonio, he has afairly good goalscoring record

Good news is because of no European commitment we will only play once a week, so hopefully Antonio doesn't miss too many games

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Doesn't really matter but...we are now officially safe!!

Max Fulham can finish on is 47 points

So with 8 games left (24 points to play) we arealready mathematically safe

I know that with the Champions league talk it doesn't really matter but given how last season went that is an unreal stat

Another unreal stat....we have now hit the woodwork 20 times... more than any other team and 3 ahead of Leeds/City who are behind us in this regard

steve

Any chance Lingards goal will be goal of the season .Saw it in real time and it looked real special ,will have to watch it again and again and again

steve

Fornals finish was pretty sweet as well

steve

As was Bowens

chicagohammer

What I want to know is, at 3-0, what did DM do when he remembered that Nobes was already on the pitch :-)

Bazshuayi

I couldnt watch the game (work) but when it went 3-2 I was refreshing my iphone every 15 seconds praying we avoided an Arsenal 3-3.

I realize that 4th with 8 games to go is incredible. I also think Liverpool has a relatively easy run of games. I know it will take something the magnitude of Leicester winning the title for us to get 4th (and how we'd stick out like sore thumbs in the champions league) BUT I thought about it earlier today (considering I've seen so many downs and precious few ups from West Ham since the early 70s) and genuinely believe I'd cry if we actually made 4th place (yes I am not ashamed to type it apparently)

OldCastleSwift

Bazshuayi said:

I couldnt watch the game (work) but when it went 3-2 I was refreshing my iphone every 15 seconds praying we avoided an Arsenal 3-3.

I realize that 4th with 8 games to go is incredible. I also think Liverpool has a relatively easy run of games. I know it will take something the magnitude of Leicester winning the title for us to get 4th (and how we'd stick out like sore thumbs in the champions league) BUT I thought about it earlier today (considering I've seen so many downs and precious few ups from West Ham since the early 70s) and genuinely believe I'd cry if we actually made 4th place (yes I am not ashamed to type it apparently)

There is an argument to say that although Liverpool have a decent run in and will likely finish above us, Leicester still have Man U, Chelsea and Spurs to play. If we beat them on Sunday we're only a point behind, so it's not inconceivable that with a fair wind we could finish above them.

I don't think we will mind, but it's nice to be talking about competing with Liverpool and Leicester for Europe rather than who has to beat who for us to get 17th.

Lukerz

Leicester also threw away a top four finish from a position of strength last season. That will be in the back of their minds.

I think Liverpool & Chelsea are likely to finish above us, however I also don’t think Chelsea have been very good under Tuchel. I think he’s scraped a lot of wins & that only normally lasts for a certain period of time. The way he’s also conducted himself at Chelsea makes me think should results turn, he may lose a few players from the trenches.

IronHerb

chicagohammer said:

What I want to know is, at 3-0, what did DM do when he remembered that Nobes was already on the pitch :-)

Prayed?

BubblesNeverDies

claretandbluesky said:

Chelsea have a lot of difficult fixtures in April. They play 6 times to our 3 for the rest of the month with a double header against Porto and a semi final against City. Liverpool have a double header against Real Madrid. I f we can keep taking points it's quite possible those two will drop here and there with the demands of those fixtures in between their league matches.

And therein lies our problem if we get into Europe. We don't have the squad depth to cope with the extra games.

IronHerb

But that's for next season.

Fortuneseeker

BND, there is a simple solution just get a bigger squad. Lets worry about that when hopefully it becomes an issue at the end of the season. GSB will need to get their heads around it as well.

MunichHammer

I had a look, just for qualifying for the group stage of the CL each team got just over 15m Euros. And on top of that go any bonuses they get for winning (2.7m euros) or drawing (900,000 euros). Even IF our form takes a nosedive, if we go out at the earliest possible moment we will still have more than half of our season to play and salvage something.
So bring it on

yoyo

GSB promised that we would become a club achieving European football. At the end of the season it is the time for them to stump up some money and back up that promise. ( regardless where we finish ).

baracks_a_hammer

yoyo said:

GSB promised

I’m going to have to stop you right at this point...

BubblesNeverDies

Alderz:
One of the big things we miss without Rice is the ability to drive us up the pitch.

This.

MunichHammer

I though we got up the pitch alright yesterday. What I noticed, however, was that once Antonio went off we lost someone who could keep the ball and bully defenders. There were a few instances yesterday when he simply refused to give the ball back to Wolves and ended up passing it to one of our players.

IronHerb

BubblesNeverDies said:

Alderz:
One of the big things we miss without Rice is the ability to drive us up the pitch.

This.

But Rice only drives us up the pitch once a game at most, if by drive you mean when he goes on a long run.

alderz

IronHerb said:

BubblesNeverDies said:

Alderz:
One of the big things we miss without Rice is the ability to drive us up the pitch.

This.

But Rice only drives us up the pitch once a game at most, if by drive you mean when he goes on a long run.

I don’t mean that, specifically. He regularly runs with the ball without doing his incredible full length of the pitch and beating three players thing. He also passes forward between the lines a lot.

IronHerb

alderz 👍

IronHerb

Just watched the highlights. When Antonio got injured Neves was standing on the back of his thigh and having a bit of a hack as well. Maybe, hopefully, it's just that rather than his hammy.

Around 8m 45s on the extended highlights.

Kuchinghammer

This squad has a brilliant attitude. They all help each other and give everything. Noble playing was important for that spirit. The other London teams have better squads but flaky attitudes. It's also the reason most neutrals now have West Ham as their second team again.

claretandbluesky

How Noble didn't get a yellow for bundling the wolves player to the floor off the ball I will never know as the ref seemed to be looking at him. I think the ref was as bemused as everyone else with it being off the ball and assumed it must have been accidental, pure American football blocking.

I loved it mind.

baracks_a_hammer

IronHerb said:

Just watched the highlights. When Antonio got injured Neves was standing on the back of his thigh and having a bit of a hack as well. Maybe, hopefully, it's just that rather than his hammy.

Around 8m 45s on the extended highlights.

Isn’t the back of the thigh and the hamstring basically the same thing?..

BubblesNeverDies

IronHerb said:

Just watched the highlights. When Antonio got injured Neves was standing on the back of his thigh and having a bit of a hack as well. Maybe, hopefully, it's just that rather than his hammy.

Around 8m 45s on the extended highlights.

Unbelievable that didn't get penalised. It's even illegal in Rugby Union

Lukerz

IronHerb said:

Just watched the highlights. When Antonio got injured Neves was standing on the back of his thigh and having a bit of a hack as well. Maybe, hopefully, it's just that rather than his hammy.

Around 8m 45s on the extended highlights.

Yeah I felt Antonio wasn’t sure, which can only be positive given his previous record (he must know when he has a serious issue).

He seemed to be in two minds about coming off & I think they settled for being safe as we were 0-2 up. Hopefully just a bit of bruising to his leg following that incident than a muscle issue.