West Ham United vs Chelsea tip preview: New faces could help end goal drought

Sergiu Baltuta
10 February 2023

Tipstrr football expert Sergiu Balbuta previews Saturday's London derby, where he expects West Ham United and Chelsea to show more attacking intent as they seek to save their disappointing campaigns.

West Ham United and Chelsea kick off another busy Premier League weekend when they meet in Saturday's lunchtime clash at the London Stadium.

This London derby has a much different flavour to last season, when both clubs were vying for European qualifying places, and each team will be looking to rescue what has been a below-par campaign so far.

West Ham have shown some recent improvement and come into this game after two decent results, a 2-0 win at home against Everton and a 1-1 draw away against high-flying Newcastle.

Even so, they still find themselves in a disappointing 17th place in the league table, just one point and one spot above the drop zone.

Those four points from their last two games equals the Hammers' total in all of their previous nine games, and with Everton and Bournemouth breathing down their necks, David Moyes' team can ill afford any wrong steps or they could finish the weekend in a relegation spot.

To win against Chelsea, West Ham need goals, and unfortunately for them this has been their main problem this season. Only Nottingham Forest, Everton and Southampton have scored fewer than their 18 goals in 21 games, despite the team creating their fair share of chances.

Gianluca Scamacca and Michail Antonio have failed to spark so far, while Jarrod Bowen has also been less productive than last term.

Last month's arrival of Danny Ings from Aston Villa is aimed to have an immediate impact for West Ham, both in terms of his own attacking threat, and also in helping to raise the level of his team-mates' performance as they compete for places.

Meanwhile, Chelsea will start the weekend in ninth place, fully 10 points behind the Champions League spots, with even Europa league football looking doubtful next season.

The team is undefeated in the last three rounds, and while manager Graham Potter can be pleased with three clean sheets, those three games saw them find the net just once, beating Crystal Palace 1-0 before sharing goalless draws with Liverpool and Fulham.

No team in the top half of the Premier League table has scored fewer than Chelsea's meagre tally of 22, but at the same time only Arsenal and Newcastle United have conceded fewer than the 21 times that the Chelsea defence has been breached.

The possible return of Ben Chilwell after his long absence could help reignite the Blues' attacking potency, especially if Reece James is also fully fit down the other flank.

The Chelsea faithful will also be hoping that their new signings, Enzo Fernandez and Mykhaylo Mudryk can start to gel, while the return of Joao Felix's after suspension adds more creativity to a Chelsea team that has struggled in that department.

Despite the fact that Chelsea's 21 league games have yielded fewer goals (43) than matches involving any other club, we need not necessarily expect that trend to continue here.

With both starting line-ups set to include new attacking talent, and with a point unlikely to suit either team at this stage of a difficult campaign, who's to say that we couldn't be in for another encounter to match the 3-2 scorelines that this fixture has produced in two of the last three seasons.