Brentford v West Ham United
Premier League, Gtech Community Stadium, Sunday 14 May 2023, 2pm BST
West Ham United can seal Premier League safety at Brentford on Sunday afternoon.
A win for the Hammers would take David Moyes' side up to 40 points and ensure they will be in the top-flight in 2023/24, however the five teams below them in the table get on this weekend.
Southampton can no longer catch the Irons, while Leeds United and Leicester City would also be unable to do so if they lose at home to Newcastle United and Liverpool respectively on Saturday lunchtime and Monday evening.
West Ham go into Sunday's game on a two-match winning run after defeating Manchester United 1-0 in the Premier League and AZ Alkmaar 2-1 in the UEFA Europa Conference League semi-final first leg.
Brentford lost 1-0 at Liverpool last weekend, having defeated Nottingham Forest and Chelsea in their two preceding Premier League fixtures.
Tickets...
Tickets for this match sold out to Bondholders and Season Ticket Holders with 58+ Points.
Travel...
Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium is well served by public transport, with a number of railway and Underground stations within walking distance.
The nearest station is Kew Bridge, which is in Zone 3 on the South Western Railway line from London Waterloo and Clapham Junction. An alternative route is via Gunnersbury, which is a ten-minute walk east of the stadium and is served by the London Underground District line and London Overground.
There are other nearby London Underground stations within a 20-minute walk - Chiswick Park (District line), Acton Town (District and Piccadilly lines) and South Ealing (Piccadilly line).
How to Follow...
Sunday's game will NOT be broadcast live in the UK, but it will be shown across the world by the Premier League's international broadcast partners.
You can listen to commentary in the UK on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio London 94.9FM and worldwide on whufc.com and our official app.
You can also follow the action via our live blog on whufc.com and our app and across our social media channels. We will also have highlights and exclusive reaction for you after the final whistle.
Team News...
West Ham United are awaiting news on Michail Antonio, who suffered a knock during Thursday's win over AZ Alkmaar, and Angelo Ogbonna, who missed the tie through illness. However, the Irons will definitely be without Gianluca Scamacca (knee) and Vladimír Coufal (hamstring).
Brentford will be without defender Pontus Jansson (thigh), winger Keane Lewis-Potter (knee) and midfielder Christian Norgaard (heel).
Opposition...
Brentford have made light work of the jump to the Premier League over the past year and a half, but the Bees’ impressive top-flight return after a 64-year absence was just the continuation of an impressive rise that began just ten years ago.
When you take a step back and realise promotion from EFL League One came just under a decade ago, their rise through the English football pyramid has been nothing short of remarkable. The club followed promotion under Mark Warburton in 2013 with seven Championship campaigns, where the Bees never finished lower than eleventh.
And, having narrowly missed out in the previous season via a Play-off final defeat by Fulham in 2020, Brentford were promoted to the top flight a year later. A Wembley win over Swansea City fired them to the Premier League for the first time and they have hardly looked back since.
Last season, a 13th-placed finish – with 13 wins – saw Brentford impress many in their debut Premier League campaign. And halfway through the 2022/23 season, it has been more of the same, as the Bees sat tenth ahead of the mid-season break for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. They had also beaten both Manchester sides by an aggregate score of 6-1 before the turn of the year.
Still, the Bees’ success on the field tells half the story of the revolutionary work that has taken place in west London over the past decade. While in the Championship, Brentford became one of the first sides to use data as their main tool for player recruitment and scouting. What followed, though, was even more radical– the club closing its Academy and setting up a B Team.
Instead of an Academy, Brentford has invested in a vast scouting network. Rather than look at wins and losses the club has embraced Key Performance Metrics (KPMs) to determine player and club performance. By using this method, Brentford have been able to scout players who were undervalued in terms of their price point when purchased. In effect, spotting talent before anyone else did.
They then took a gamble, and if the player performed, the Bees raked in the profits as their value rocketed. If they didn’t, the loss was minimal.
The results have followed too. Brentford made an estimated £100m from the sales of stars Saïd Benrahma, Ollie Watkins and Neil Maupay. Ivan Toney, then 2020 EFL League One Player of the Year, was brought for around £10m. You would have to say he is worth a fair bit more than that in today’s market.
Of course, there is a real importance to such financial success off the field. Profits from players are key for clubs such as Brentford to retain a competitive squad that can hold its own in the top-flight. And since their arrival in the Premier League, the Bees, under Thomas Frank, have shown they can compete too.
Previous Meetings...
Sunday's game will be just the fourth Premier League fixture between the two clubs, with Brentford having won home and away against the Hammers in their debut Premier League campaign last term. Thomas Frank's side also scored a 2-0 victory at London Stadium in this season's reverse fixture on 30 December.
We then went to Gtech Community Stadium in the FA Cup third round in January and won 1-0 courtesy of a second-half goal from former Bee Saïd Benrahma.
Prior to that, the most-recent meetings came back in the 1992/93 season, when both clubs were in the old First Division (now the Championship).
West Ham were promoted that season, having drawn 0-0 at Brentford's old Griffin Park stadium before thrashing the Bees 4-0 at the Boleyn Ground, where Martin Allen, Peter Butler, Trevor Morley and Kevin Keen got the goals for Billy Bonds' Hammers.
Our first-ever meeting came all the way back on 11 September 1897, when Thames Ironworks FC, as we were then known, won a London League fixture 1-0 at the Memorial Grounds, with Scotsman Jimmy Reid getting the only goal of the game in front of 1,000 spectators.
Match Officials...
Referee: Michael Oliver
Assistant Referees: Lee Betts & Dan Cook
Fourth Official: Thomas Bramall
VAR: Robert Jones
Assistant VAR: Ian Hussin
Michael Oliver, who has been a member of the Select Group of Referees since August 2010, will take charge of our trip to Gtech Community Stadium.
Born in Ashington, Northumberland in February 1985, Oliver started refereeing in the Northern Premier League from 2003 to 2005. He then worked his way up through the National League and EFL to reach the Premier League in January 2010.
The 38-year-old refereed the 2007 Conference National and 2009 League One Play-Off finals, the 2016 EFL Cup final and 2018 and 2021 FA Cup finals.
Oliver refereed at the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar, and has taken charge of over 50 UEFA Champions League and Europa League fixtures since being appointed to the FIFA list in 2012.
He has officiated West Ham United on 39 occasions, with the first being a 3-0 FA Cup third-round victory over Barnsley in January 2009.
This will be the fifth time he has officiated West Ham this season in the Premier League.
