Confident Hammers raring to go against Arsenal – Bilic

The path on the road to a first Premier League title since 2004 begins at the Emirates Stadium for Arsenal this Sunday as they kick off their campaign by hosting West Ham United.

Arsene Wenger’s men also showed no fitness issues when beating Chelsea 1-0 in the Community Shield and so are unlikely to be taken advantage of in terms of this fixtures coming so early in the season.

The Croatian left a number of key players in London as the Hammers crashed out of the Europa League at the hands of Romainian side Astra Giurgiu but most are in line to return at the Emirates, with loanee Carl Jenkinson unavailable against his parent club.

Our correspondents Ben Kosky and Dave Evans got together to discuss the merits of both clubs for the season ahead of the derby in our first podcast of the season.

“We have a big season ahead of us which starts on Sunday and we are going to be good in the Premier League“.

The level of the new additions and Payet’s adaption to the Premier League pace will determine whether West Ham finish closer to Europe or the middle of nowhere.

West Ham later confirmed that the Ecuador worldwide will miss 12 weeks of action. “Winston Reid, Matt Jarvis, Pedro Obiang, Darren Randolph and Stephen Hendrie have all recovered well”, head of medical and sports science Stijn Vandenbroucke told West Ham’s official website.

A strong end to the season saw Arsenal claim third and the all-important final spot for automatic qualification into this year’s Champions League.

But with the club unable to attract the likes of Real Madrid boss Rafa Benitez or Europa League victor Unai Emery, former West Ham star Slaven Bilic was anointed the chosen one. “I am very confident about that”.

Oxford and his West Ham team-mates travel to Romania this week where they will attempt to progress further in the Europa League.

But, after seeing a specialist to determine the full extent of the problem, the player revealed on Instagram that he does not need to go under the knife to fix the damage. West Ham thought they could comfortably win this qualifying round and have an easy second match.

“I said (on Wednesday) that we had more chances to win with some of the players who stayed in London but I think the boys not only did everything, the effort was there, the quality was there as well – especially until they scored two goals”.