Chelsea showed signs of promise against Liverpool, but can they get their first win of the season at West Ham? Look ahead to the game with our West Ham vs Chelsea prediction and preview.
West Ham vs Chelsea: The Quick Hits
- The Opta supercomputer makes Chelsea favourites here, but only just, with a 36.6% win probability.
- David Moyes has never beaten Mauricio Pochettino in the Premier League.
- West Ham have lost more Premier League London derbies than any other team.
Match Preview
It feels like Chelsea have been described as being a “new-look” team every week for a year now, and that theme looks likely to continue for a little while yet as they keep splashing the cash in the transfer market.
They may have missed out on Michael Olise, who was surprisingly convinced to sign a new deal at Crystal Palace, but Chelsea are still expected to give Moisés Caicedo his club debut after breaking the British transfer record to bring him in from Brighton in a deal potentially worth up to £115 million. Roméo Lavia could yet arrive from Southampton as well.
Mauricio Pochettino’s options are almost endless but there were few suggestions on Matchday 1 that this is causing any lack of cohesion, with Chelsea’s performance in the 1-1 draw at home to Liverpool largely positive as they dominated much of the game, ending with 65.4% possession, their highest in a Premier League game against Liverpool since at least 2003-04.
A short trip across the capital awaits this Sunday, with Chelsea aiming to pick up their first win of the season. It would also double as their 150th Premier League London derby victory, a figure only Arsenal have reached; West Ham, on the other hand, have lost the most (119).
But while Chelsea played fairly well against Liverpool, it was another instance of them dropping points. It’s been a year or so of significant upheaval at the club, but even when taking that into consideration, fans surely didn’t expect them to go on a run of just five wins in 30 Premier League games.
It’s their worst run in terms of victories over a 30-match span in the league since between December 1987 and October 1988. Only one of those five wins has come in their 13 most recent matches as well, highlighting how poorly they ended the 2022-23 campaign.
Some will argue last season’s form is irrelevant given the changes that have occurred since, including Pochettino’s arrival, but it remains a psychological barrier Chelsea need to overcome. The same could be said for their travails on the road, as their 10 away defeats last term was the most they’ve suffered since 1997-98 (11).
West Ham have had to contend with plenty of change themselves over the past couple of months, and further to that, manager David Moyes has a wretched record against Pochettino in the league. The Scot has never beaten the former Tottenham coach in five attempts, only facing Pep Guardiola (11), Graham Potter (7) and Mikel Arteta (7) more times without success.
West Ham’s most recent signing James Ward-Prowse could make his debut in this one. He’s Moyes’ second summer signing following Edson Álvarez’s arrival from Ajax.
In terms of team news, it looks like Chelsea will be without Reece James after their skipper picked up an injury against Liverpool and then suffered another setback in training this week. Christopher Nkunku and Wesley Fofana remain long-term absentees.
Victory for either team on Sunday would arguably be a sign of genuine progress, with West Ham aiming to move on from Declan Rice and Chelsea hoping they can re-establish themselves among England’s best with a squad for the future.
West Ham vs Chelsea Head-to-Head
Even with home advantage, most will consider West Ham to be underdogs here. But one quirk that might provide fans with optimism – particularly those of the superstitious variety – is that they’ve alternated between winning (4) and then not winning (D2 L2) across their previous eight home clashes with Chelsea; this fixture was drawn 1-1 last season.
They’ve also only lost one of their past six home league games against Chelsea, and six of their previous seven top-flight wins in this fixture have come at their own ground.
So, a West Ham win confirmed then, yeah?
What might make for slightly more uncomfortable reading for West Ham is that Chelsea have only beaten Spurs (33) more times in the Premier League than them (29).
Moyes’ side also only won two of their 12 London derbies in the league last term, but then Chelsea didn’t really fare much better, winning just one of their past nine.
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 this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides…
West Ham vs Chelsea Prediction
The Opta supercomputer expects this to be a tight contest. Chelsea are favourites, according to the model, but only just and West Ham can definitely consider themselves in with a good shot of taking all three points.
Chelsea’s probability of winning is 36.6%, making it the most likely outcome, but that’s only 2.6 percentage points more than West Ham’s chance of victory (34.0%).
Therefore, and forgive the showing off, the powers of subtraction put the possibility of a draw at 29.4%.
Given the talent brought in by Chelsea in recent months, West Ham might not have a better opportunity to get one over them for a little while as Pochettino continues to settle in.
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