On the upcoming Friday West Ham will host Manchester City at their home ground within the third round of the English Cup. If in other countries a cup competition is considered a secondary tournament, for English teams the competition is very important. One should not forget, that the break between matches on the Boxing day and Cup matches is very small and most of the EPL teams simply aren’t going to recover.
West Ham didn’t look that good on the Boxing day. Everything started well for Slaven Bilic’s team, with the away victory over Swansea 4:1, but after that, defeats from Leicester and Manchester United followed. One cannot say, that the Hammers looked bad in the lost games, but there is no result. West Ham are currently on the 13th position in the EPL’s tournament table with 22 points in the asset.
The current season for Guardiola is the first in England, therefore mistakes in the work of the specialist are inevitable. Man City do not perform that well with big teams for now: there were defeats from Chelsea and Liverpool, but with the middle-class teams, which West Ham are, the Eagles play very decently, besides, Man City have had 7 victories in 10 away matches within the EPL.
Guardiola will try to win at least some tournament in England in the current season. It will be very hard to win the EPL, but the Eagles are quite capable to win the FA Cup trophy. As for West Ham, the team has constant problems when playing at their home ground.
Prediction for the match: Manchester City to win.
