Thursday night sees an exciting London derby in the Premier League at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. We look ahead to the match with our Tottenham vs West Ham prediction and preview.
Tottenham vs West Ham Stats: The Quick Hits
- Tottenham are predicted to win this match against West Ham by the Opta supercomputer, having won 51.4% of the pre-match simulations.
- Ange Postecoglou hasn’t lost three successive home games with a top-flight club since August 2018 while in charge of Japanese side Yokohama F. Marinos.
- If West Ham United lose this match, it’ll be David Moyes’ 15th Premier League defeat against Spurs as a manager, equalling Sam Allardyce’s competition record.
Match Preview
Ange Postecoglou will be hoping to put an end to Tottenham Hotspur’s recent loss of form with a home victory in their London derby versus West Ham on Matchday 15 of the Premier League season.
Losing in his own back yard isn’t something that’s happened too often to the Australian boss in recent years. Following back-to-back home league defeats against Chelsea and Aston Villa, Ange Postecoglou could lose three successive home games with a top-flight side in all competitions for the first time since a run of four with Yokohama F. Marinos in August 2018.
But he comes up against a Hammers’ side led by experienced Scottish boss David Moyes. This will be the 35th occasion that Moyes has led a side into battle with Spurs in the Premier League, but he’s lost 14 of the previous 34. If his West Ham side lose this match on Thursday, he’ll equal Sam Allardyce’s record of having the most Premier League defeats versus Tottenham as a manager (15).
Both Spurs and West Ham have shown weakness in holding onto leads in league matches this season. Ahead of MD 15, only Burnley (14) have dropped more points from winning positions than Spurs (13) and Bournemouth (13), while West Ham have only dropped one fewer (12).
Only Newcastle currently have bigger injury issues than Tottenham in the Premier League. Eric Dier and Pape Matar Sarr are rated highly unlikely to be fit for this game, joining James Maddison, Micky van de Ven, Manor Solomon, Ryan Sessegnon and Ivan Perisic on the sidelines, while Rodrigo Bentancur’s recent injury against Aston Villa will keep him out for a couple of months. One plus is that Argentine defender Cristian Romero is back from suspension after his red card against Chelsea.
Spurs’ injury crisis may have derailed their excellent start to the Premier League season, but their record of 27 points from their 14 matches in 2023-24 is still one more than they won at this stage last season under Antonio Conte (26). West Ham have also improved on last term, winning seven more points (21) after 14 games than they did in 2022-23 (14). In fact, on the last occasion they won this many points at this stage of a Premier League campaign (2020-21), they ended the season in sixth place.
The pre-match team news for Moyes’ side is a lot more positive than it is for Spurs, with only Michail Antonio expected to be ruled out, but Kurt Zouma may be absent for personal reasons.
With Antonio likely to be out, much of West Ham’s goalscoring threat is expected to come via England international Jarrod Bowen. He’s scored six goals in six Premier League away games this season, having netted just four in his first 69 on the road beforehand. The only West Ham players to score more away from home in a single Premier League campaign are Trevor Morley (seven in 1993-94) and Paulo Wanchope (seven in 1999-00).
Tottenham vs West Ham Head-to-Head
Only against Everton (29) and Manchester City (28) do Tottenham have more Premier League wins against a specific opponent than their 26 against West Ham.
Tottenham are unbeaten in their last four competitive meetings with West Ham, winning three and drawing one of those games. Their most recent meeting came in the Premier League back in February at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where second-half goals from Emerson Royal and Son Heung-min sealed a 2-0 victory and sent the Hammers into the relegation zone with 15 matches of the 2022-23 season remaining.
West Ham were actually the first away team to win a Premier League game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in April 2019, courtesy of a 67th-minute Antonio strike. They have picked up just one point in four subsequent league trips there, however (W0 D1 L3).
Recent Form
Spurs ended a three-game losing streak with the 3-3 draw away at Premier League champions Manchester City on Sunday. Goals from Son, Giovani Lo Celso and a last-minute equaliser from Dejan Kulusevski sealed a well-earned point.
At home, Tottenham have lost each of their last two Premier League games, versus Chelsea and Aston Villa. They last lost three in a row at home in the same campaign in February 2007 under Martin Jol.
West Ham are on a five-game unbeaten run across all competitions, with Sunday’s 1-1 home draw with Crystal Palace at London Stadium ending a four-game winning streak versus Nottingham Forest and Burnley in the Premier League, and Olympiacos and TSC Bačka Topola in the UEFA Europa League. Tomás Soucek scored the winning goal for West Ham in the 89th-minute or later in three of those matches.
Neither side had great form in midweek matches across the Premier League last season. West Ham failed to win any of their six such games (Tuesday to Thursday) in 2022-23, drawing twice and losing four. Spurs won just one of theirs (D2 L2), with that coming in a 4-0 victory over Crystal Palace in a January London derby.
Of all 20 current Premier League clubs, West Ham are on the longest run of matches without a goalless draw in the competition (74 games), while only Man City and Sheffield United (both 61) have gone longer than Spurs (57) in addition to the Hammers.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Thursday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides:
Tottenham vs West Ham Opta Player Ratings
The Opta Player Ratings are something we introduced ahead of 2023-24. For a quick primer on how they’re calculated, you can check our explainer here.
Before kick-off in this match, here are the top five performing players from both teams in the 2023-24 Premier League according to the Opta Player Ratings:
Tottenham
Son Heung-min: 85.8 (out of 100)
James Maddison: 77.9
Dejan Kulusevski: 72.6
Pape Matar Sarr: 72.2
Micky van de Ven: 70.9
West Ham
James Ward-Prowse: 78.9 (out of 100)
Jarrod Bowen: 75.2
Mohammed Kudus: 73.6
Vladimír Coufal: 66.1
Kurt Zouma: 65.6
These Opta Player Ratings also power our set of brand-new, free-to-play gaming experiences, which you can play on Opta Analyst all season long.
Tottenham vs West Ham Prediction
The Opta supercomputer predicts Tottenham will win this London derby against West Ham on Thursday, with the home side winning 51.4% of the simulations before kick-off.
Across the 10,000 pre-match simulations, West Ham came away with at least a point 48.6% of the time (22.7% chance of an away win, 25.9% chance of a draw) – that would see Spurs’ winless Premier League run extend to five matches.
Despite being only six points off the top of the Premier League table heading into Matchday 15, Tottenham are being given just a 0.2% chance of winning the title in 2023-24. That chance is below favourites Man City (67.1%), Liverpool (16.3%), Arsenal (15.5%), Aston Villa (0.6%) and Newcastle (0.3%).
Tottenham’s chances of finishing in the top four come the end of May currently stand at 21.5%, below those aforementioned teams, but above Manchester United (5.3%) and Brighton (4.0%). West Ham are next best, with a 0.9% chance of a top-four finish, but their most likely league position at the end of the season is ninth, according to the Opta supercomputer (18.5% chance).
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