West Ham United will host Brentford in their Premier League clash at the London Stadium this evening and David Moyes will be desperate for his team to turn things around after a torrid start to 2024.
The Hammers are still without a win this year in the Premier League with performances falling off a cliff in more recent weeks, so there will be strive for redemption when the hosts welcome Thomas Frank and his team to East London tonight.
Now, David Moyes’ prayers may have been answered after enduring an eight-game winless run, as there is a strong chance that Lucas Paqueta could return to the starting line-up this evening.
The Brazilian playmaker has not been seen since the first week of January in an FA Cup third-round tie with Bristol City and there is no doubt that his absence has felt, so his potential involvement against the Bees will be a massive boost.
Paqueta has now been back in full team training for almost two weeks and the West Ham boss revealed over the weekend that he is looking ready for his return:
“Lucas Paqueta is back in training and very close to returning,”
“Hopefully that will give us a huge boost.”
“He’s certainly in contention for Monday night.”
“But I’ll need to find out exactly where he is, but overall we’re so pleased that we’ve got him back in as it has been a while.”
In fact, other than Kalvin Phillips who will serve his suspension, Moyes could have a squad with full availability which puts him in an advantageous position to finally collect the three points that are desperately needed at this stage of the season.
How could West Ham line up against Brentford?
We predict that Moyes will make just one change to his starting eleven, which lost 2-0 to Nottingham Forest last weekend, maintaining a 4-2-3-1 formation.
We expect that the defensive set up will remain unchanged, with Alphonse Areola in goal, and Vladimir Coufal, Kurt Zouma, Nayef Aguerd and Emerson holding the back-line.
In midfield, we predict that the Scottish manager will make his one and only change to his previous starting line-up, with Tomas Soucek coming into the fold to replace Phillips, alongside Edson Alvarez and James Ward-Prowse to make up the midfield trio.
Going forward we do not imagine that Moyes will be reckless enough to throw Paqueta straight back into the attacking threat, but will instead reintroduce the star from the bench.
As a result, Jarrod Bowen, Mohammed Kudus, and Michail Antonio seem like the most likely driving forces to steal the game from Brentford under the lights in the capital tonight.
