No West Ham until Monday, so which games should you pay attention too?

The one thing that American and European football has in common is that Monday nights are played under the lights. That is what happens this Monday when West Ham head to Aston Villa, but what can the Hammers look for in the matches that lead up to Monday night?

Currently, West Ham sits in 7th place of the EPL table on 7 points and being that they play the last match of the week, they alone can dictate where they will sit after match week 5. Besides that, players and fans can see what future competition will look like and plan for future matches.

Future opponents

Let’s start with the latter and look at the matches that key to watch for future opponents. First up and obviously the biggest, Manchester United. The Red Devils are at home this weekend and face off against Leicester City. The Hammers should be focusing to see if United and get back to winning as they only have 2 points in the last 3 matches. This matchup won’t be and east one as Leicester are coming off 2 wins on the bounce and looking red-hot so far.

Another soon to be opponent is Bournemouth who West Ham will face on September 28th. This week the Cherries match up against Everton at home. For West Ham, they must look to see how Eddie Howes team faces adversity from a rough start and how they play a much stronger side at home.  After Villa, these two matches are key to the success or failure of the Hammer’s early season.

Table Movement

As previously mentioned, the Hammers are sitting in 7th place. Realistically they would climb as high as 3rd or as low as 16th. Yes, you read that right, that’s just how jammed packed the EPL table is at the moment. The Villa match can be key to getting their goal differential back up in the positives after starting -5 all thanks to City.

Rising up will mean a win for the good guys and any number of the 4 teams between 3rd and 6th to fail. Luckily for the Irons, most of these teams have tough matches this weekend. The before mentioned Leicester plays United and Everton go to Bournemouth. While Palace has the Spurs and Arsenal has Watford, but a new manager means uncertainty for sure.

So all this means is that you have 2 matches today and 2 matches tomorrow to watch that will dictate where the Hammers could land in the table and what their future opponents will look like. We are still las than a quarter of the way through the season, but every match week counts and this is a big one for the Hammers.