You really cannot seperate these two clubs when it comes to head to head league meetings; City winning 33, the Hammers 32 and 11 draws.
I suspect that will be 33 all come 5pm on Saturday with City being the generous hosts that we are, allowing Senor Tevez to open his scoring account for West Ham. Apart from the recent FA Cup victory and the victory under caretaker manager Trevor Brooking who narrowly failed to keep the hammers up, the trend remains with City winning in Manchester and City getting the London Claret and Blues at the Boleyn ground.
City are without suspended Dabo and Hamman still looking for match fitness, the cover for Joey Barton is not perhaps there. The question for Stuart Pearce is does he select Ishmael Miller on the left from the start, or take the risk on new loan signing DeMarcus Beasley.
If he takes the option of continuing with Claudio Reyna then he will be in for a torrid time from the fans as Reyna is at best an average player in centre midfield. Stick him on the left and he just becomes a hindrance. Trevor Sinclair if he plays will be facing his former club, I am sure this was playing on his mind at Chesterfield as he failed to put in any effort and risk injury in my opinion.
One good thing about the game though sees us kick off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, which might make the crowd slightly larger had this fixture been moved like so many of our pre-Christmas games.
Player to Watch: Carlos Tevez – bound to score his opening West Ham goal.
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