Ashburton Grove plays host to a 3pm GMT/10am EST/5am HST kickoff. NBCSN will provide television coverage in the States. Holy shit. A Saturday afternoon kickoff. It’s a miracle! The other fixtures this weekend look tough for our rivals. This could be a great opportunity to close the gap. Let’s smash these fools. Up the Arsenal.
As of right now, the nbc sports website is showing us on NBCSN, Wolves/Brighton on CNBC, and all the other games on Gold.
+1 for reference to the Grove +1 for Sat 3pm KO... we should now be seeing more of these henceforth +1 for the need to smash them (and @GunnerJacket will have extra incentive I suspect) Question is: can we really deliver, so as to catch up some of the teams above us? If he favors the veterans instead of the kids who did well midweek (Nelson, Martinelli, Nketiah, etc) then he better have them ready to come in shortly after HT if those vets aren't delivering! Martinelli especially, who I've developed quite a soft spot for.
That sucks for Lucas (and us). Depending on the extent of the fracturing, those can be tricky recoveries. We surely know about one or two of those in our past. Also shows you that those optimistic comments shortly after the match were just blind optimism. Mike Dean sucks too... pray that he retires end of this year... he's almost 60!!! Edit: Had his age wrong, as was nicely pointed out later.
One overlooked aspect in the build up to this game is that Arteta actually played for Moyes at Everton.
Oh yeah. I thought I heard on some podcast that he was mid/high 50's. "Not that there's anything wrong with that." (spoken with very direct knowledge) But any reason to give him the boot, I'll take it!
This should be a win especially a Moyesian Hammers squad that's looking at Relegation but tbh we are not good enough at all to feel confident of a win at home vs them. I would like to see the players in form play regardless of age or seniority or tenure at the club but I suspect it will be the usual crew. A 4-2-3-1 most likely we just don't have the personell to play the 4-3-3 which is what I would prefer.
Back to the league line-up he's been favoring, with these notables/exceptions: Mari gets his first start in EPL; Sokratis as RB again; Nketiah up top
And there's their 3rd great chance. Luckily Leno is there to save the day. If we don't score soon, or improve our defense, this could get ugly.
Sokratis almost makes it 2 for 2 on a beautiful header that hits the bar. And I loved his reaction... totally berating himself!
This midfield is so poor, not only is the ball not progressing through it centrally they are giving away the ball like crazy.
Pepe with 2 super dangerous slaloming runs in a row. He shows so much promise. We just need some end product.