West Ham vs Chelsea – Team News: Maresca plays two strikers in interesting formation shift | OneFootball

Chelsea face West Ham at the London Stadium in just over an hour, and the teams are in!

A Sunday to Friday turnover means not a huge amount of time to rest or train for Enzo Maresca’s group, and we expected a few changes from the Italian coach.

Robert Sanchez continues in goal, as you’d expect. Reece James keeps his routine of not starting more than once every 7 days – Malo Gusto is in to replace him.

In the middle of defence, Trevoh Chalobah lines up alongside Tosin Adarabioyo, who is fit to return and send Josh Acheampong back to the bench. Marc Cucurella is at left back.

In the middle, it’s the same Moises Caicedo – Enzo Fernandez – Cole Palmer trio that we will see a lot of this season. They weren’t able to break down Crystal Palace last week, and we will need some more dynamism and forward passing from all 3.

The front line is where things get interesting – Joao Pedro keeps his place, as does Pedro Neto, but Liam Delap has come in to replace Jamie Gittens.

Wesley Fofana has his second game running on the bench – if all is going well with half an hour to go, we bet Maresca would love to get him on and give him a run out.

Here are the full team line-ups for West Ham vs Chelsea (kick off at 20:00 GMT)

CHELSEA:

Chelsea’s team to take on West Ham.

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The setup in attack is what’s interesting. Rather than a front two, we assume it’s going to be Joao Pedro wide on the left with Delap leading the line, simply because JP has more experience out wide than the Englishman.

But it could be fluid, it could be both as a striker partnership with Neto one side and Palmer taking up wide positions on the other side.