Today West Ham take on Martin Jol’s Fulham at Upton Park in the early kick off and both of the sides will be looking to shake off previous weekend defeats. West Ham were played and most notably, passed of the pitch against Swansea and it didn’t help their cause when the East London side gave Swansea City two gifts for their opening goals. Fulham travelled to Manchester to take on the Red Devils and they started brightly with Damien Duff scoring after just a few minutes, though they faced a steam train with Robin Van Persie scoring on his Manchester United home debut.
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At the time of writing, it is 16:00 on Deadline day, a day where it is acceptable to have your eyes glued to Sky Sports News all day long. Though, as of 12 o’clock on Deadline day, players signed after this point, are not eligible to play for West Ham at Upton Park on Saturday Lunch. Though, one player that West Ham United were delighted to announce as a Hammer was Andy Carroll from Liverpool on a season long loan deal, with the option for West Ham United to make it a permanent deal at the end of the season, Carroll will be eligible to start against Fulham this weekend. For Fulham, they will have Kieran Richardson, a player West Ham were heavily linked with earlier on in the summer, available after signing him early in the day on Deadline Day. Though new signing Dimitar Berbatov, will not be able to feature this weekend.
Our last meeting with Fulham was at Craven Cottage on Boxing Day where a brace from Carlton Cole and a Freddie Sears goal won it 3-1 for West Ham. We do have a generally good record in games against Fulham, having won 4 of our last 6 with Carlton Cole scoring in each one of these games. Martin Jol will be eager to turn around his sides’ fortunes.
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Fulham’s Key Player: Mladen Petric
The former Hamburg striker joined Fulham on a bosman over the summer and the Croatian has featured prominently for Fulham, scoring on his debut and performing a neat little trick for Alex Kacaniklic. Petric is a proven goal scorer across Europe and his ties with Martin Jol were key reasons in how Fulham were able to pull off the coup of signing the Croat. The player to watch out for though is most definitely Alex Kacaniklic, who has been a box of tricks and has vast amounts of pace on the wing for Fulham. He could one day become a star of the Premier League, as he is only 21 years old.
The key player for West Ham may be the ninth summer signing that Sam Allardyce brought in, Andy Carroll.
Carroll was throughout the summer linked with us and we were told by various reports that a loan deal had been agreed at the start of August. Though we finally completed the move on the 30 th August.
Meaning that he will be eligible to play and I personally believe that it will be the move that can re-ignite his career again. We all know that he struggled during his time at Liverpool, though with the players that are around him at West Ham and the players who can influence him at West Ham will keep him driven. Kevin Nolan was a huge mentor to Andy when they were playing together in Newcastle and Sam knows him well from his time managing the Toon. Andy has the quality, if you doubt that, you are usually picking the ball out of your net. He scored one of the goals of the tournament at Euro 2012 with a thunderbolt of a header past the Swedish Goalkeeper. With the players on the wing like Vaz Te and Jarvis, he will be supplied with endless amounts of crosses, which he has the skill to use to his best ability.
My Starting XI –
Jaaskaleinen Demel Tomkins Collins McCartney Nolan Noble Diame Vaz Te Jarvis Carroll
Match Stat: West Ham have lost only one of their last fifteen matches against Fulham.
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