Arsene Wenger expects a challenging game against a confident West Ham team, suggesting the hosts have a “big advantage”, due to them having an extra day to train and prepare.
Arsenal take on West Ham at the London Stadium on Wednesday night, with both sides desperate for three points.
West Ham are fighting to pull away from the relegation zone after a poor start to the season, while Arsenal are looking for a rare away win to keep up with their rivals at the top of the table.
Despite the difference in their league position, Arsene Wenger is anticipating a difficult game.
“It will be because they were unlucky against City. They will build some confidence certainly against Chelsea so it will be a game against a West Ham with more confidence and more dangers as well,” he said, as reported by Football London.
The game is part of a busy run of fixtures for Arsenal that will see them play four times before Christmas day, and twice in the final week of December.
Arsenal’s Europa League participation meant they had to play last Sunday, while West Ham played on the previous Saturday. Wenger feels the extra day of rest could make a difference.
“Well they had 24 hours more recovery than us so if it just taken a little bit more out of them they have a big advantage on that front. We cannot speculate that physically we will suffer maybe in the third game, not tomorrow.”
The Hammers defeated Chelsea on Saturday, and are looking a bit better under David Moyes than they did under Slaven Bilic. Wenger isn’t surprised by their improvement.
“No, not at all. First of all, I think they had a good manager before with Bilic who has done an excellent job but at some stage it depends on confidence and injuries and Moyes has big experience to build them up again and he has shown that recently. I’m not surprised. He has big experience in the Premier League.”
Arsenal won 5-1 the last time they visited the London Stadium, but Wenger doesn’t think we’ll see a repeat of that game.
“For us, we try to win the game, no matter how big the win will be it will be welcome but at the time West Ham were a bit short of confidence and we took advantage of it,” he added.