In terms of goals per match, these two teams are the two lowest in the league. West Ham matches see just 2.1 goals on average this season and Chelsea matches are even lower on 2.0 goals per match. West Ham are 21 matches into the season now yet only 5 of their matches have seen over 2.5 goals. Furthermore, at the London Stadium only 2 of their 10 matches have seen over 2.5 goals this season. Chelsea, under Potter particularly, have had a lot of low-scoring matches. In their last 5 matches, only 1 Chelsea match had over 2.5 goals, their 2-1 win over Fulham, while the other 4 all ended either 1-0 or 0-0. Since Potter went 9 games unbeaten at the start of his reign at Chelsea, Chelsea have scored just 8 goals in their last 13 matches. Even with the new signings, Chelsea are left with Kai Havertz as their first choice striker and he has scored just 1 in their last 7 matches.

Neither team are scoring many or conceding many, I expect this to be a nervy affair with neither team willing to take many risks in attacking, therefore under 2.5 goals looks a good price in this match.

West Ham are very defensive as a team and Moyes prefers to set his teams up to not concede and get the low number of goals needed to win rather than throw men forward. As a result of this, only 3 teams average less possession per match than West Ham. West Ham had 31% possession in the reverse fixture against Chelsea when Tuchel was manager and last weekend against Newcastle they had 37% possession. Against the big teams they tend to sit back even deeper than usual and allow the opposition a lot of passes. Chelsea’s possession numbers have been very high under Potter recently. They had 71% possession against Nottingham Forest in January and 66% possession in their last match against Fulham.

Only against Manchester City have Chelsea had less than 50% possession in their last 8 league matches. Thiago Silva is a key player in this Chelsea team and has been consistently hitting high pass numbers recently. Silva has averaged 80.4 passes per 90 so far this season and has hit at least 70 passes in 6 of his last 8 matches. In the match against West Ham earlier in the season he attempted 106 passes, he has only surpassed this amount 3 times this season and one of them was in his last match against Fulham.

Chelsea draw the 3rd most fouls per 90 of any team in the league at an average of 12 per match. West Ham commit an average of 10 fouls per match and have several high fouling players. Chelsea’s players on the left hand side all draw lots of fouls; Mount, Sterling and Mudryk all draw at least 1 foul per match and love to dribble at opposition players. Coufal has committed at least 1 foul in 10 of his last 14 West Ham matches and averages 1.05 fouls per 90.

Up against any of Chelsea’s left wingers he will struggle in this match and even if left back Marc Cucurella gets forward, he draws 0.99 fouls per match and Coufal will struggle against him. West Ham are expected to sit back and invite Chelsea pressure, against teams in the top 7 Coufal has committed at least 1 foul in 5 of the 7 matches and I expect him to commit at least 1 foul in this match.

West Ham have averaged 4.95 corners per match this season and at home have had at least 4 corners in 8 of their last 9 home matches. West Ham do sit back against bigger teams but this has not prevented them winning corners so far this season. Against Arsenal they had 5 corners and against Manchester United they had 10.

As well as this, they had 3 corners in their away match against Liverpool as well as 3 corners when they travelled to Stamford Bridge earlier in the season. Chelsea have conceded 5 corners per match on average so far this season and in their 11 away matches this season, only Nottingham Forest didn’t manage at least 4 corners against them. In their match away at Stamford Bridge earlier in the season they had 3 corners and with home advantage in this match I expect the number of corners to be higher here.