West Ham United vs Blackburn Rovers: Hammers look for new hope
16th placed West Ham take on 11th placed Blackburn with both teams looking to improve on recent encouraging signs.
With the new owners in place the parlous state of finances in English football is obvious when Tony Fernandes, who narrowly missed out on buying West Ham, revealed that within a week he was offered stakes in seven clubs - including three in the Premier League. Fernandes appears to be willing to wait and see how things go for Davids Gold and Sullivan - and with 10,000 Hammers fans having written to him he may get the prize eventually. With towering debts of £110m it may be all that West Ham can do to keep their best players. West Ham have lost just one of the last twelve against Blackburn and after a below par result on Tuesday really need to extend that record.
Blackburn have hit form in recent weeks, beating Wigan 2-1 last time out, scoring 4 in defeat to Villa in the League Cup and a 2-0 win over Fulham immediately before that - a third consecutive league win would thrust Rovers rather surprisingly into the top half of the division ten points clear of danger. Which with 14 games left would all but end any relegation concerns - which sounds a little too easy for comfort!
Prediction Panel
Our panel contains both Squarefootball writers and readers, the writers are marked: (sqf).
Dave Blackburn : 2 - 1
Chris Cox : TBC
Graham Enwright : 1 - 0
Sue Gardener : 2 - 2
Chris Goodwin : 1 - 0
Paul Grech (sqf) : TBC
Colin Illingworth (sqf) : 3 - 1
Hugh Larkin (sqf) : TBC
Peter Lee : 2 - 1
Don McMahon : 1 - 1
Antony Melvin (sqf) : 2 - 2
Paul O'Meara (sqf) : TBC
Dave Nash : 0 - 0
Stephen Orford (sqf) : TBC
Tony Ratton : 2 - 1
Peter Rendle : 1 - 2
Dan Taylor : TBC
Andy Wakeman : 2 - 0
Isaac Williams : TBC
Mark Williams : TBC
Panel Verdict
The panel is expecting the new owners to go away happy after a 2-1 win.
Home: 7; Draw: 4; Away: 1; TBC: 8.
* Do we have it right, or do you know better? Please don't bother with derisory comments on the predictions after the match - unless you also pulled us up before it!
