Paul Merson has made a worrying new claim about West Ham on live TV ahead of the huge relegation clash against the Saints.
After three long weeks without a Premier League game, West Ham face a huge relegation six-pointer against Southampton at the London Stadium.
And the stakes could not be much higher.
Win and West Ham can go 14th. Lose and the Hammers will find themselves replacing the Saints at at the bottom of the table.
The game kicks off a do or die spell of nine games in 27 days for West Ham.
Ahead of the the run-in all the data experts make West Ham one of the favourites to stay up among the nine clubs currently in the mix.
First Opta revealed its low percentage chance of West Ham being relegated.
Then the BBC teamed up with data specialists Nielsen’s Gracenote to deliver a similar prediction.
Ahead of the West Ham vs Saints clash, pundit Paul Merson backed the Hammers to win 2-0 in his column with Sportskeeda, describing it as a ‘cup final’.
But speaking at length about the game on Sky Sports Soccer Saturday, his confidence in West Ham avoiding the drop appears to be wavering.
And Merson has made a worrying new claim about West Ham on live TV ahead of the huge Saints clash.
Paul Merson makes worrying new claim about West Ham on live TV ahead of huge Saints clash
“Only time will tell (whether the Europa Conference League is a hindrance to West Ham) but I think at the moment it is a nice distraction,” Merson said on Sky Sports.
“I think it just takes their mind off it (the relegation battle).
“(But) I start to worry about West Ham. I’ve sat on here all season and thought ‘no chance West Ham (will go down), no chance West Ham’. But three games in six days – I don’t care if you’re the top team in the league, to win three games in six days is very, very difficult.
“They need four points out of them three games in my opinion (vs Saints, Newcastle and Fulham). And then it’s Arsenal after that and then if they beat Gent you never know.
“I’d be very, very surprised if they lost to Southampton. We were going through this not long ago, they had Forest at home, they were in a bad place and they brushed them aside 4-0. I mean this team can play, I don’t think they should be where they are.”
Neither do we Merse, neither do we.
But we are and let’s hope he’s right and we beat Southampton to make a winning start to our bid to beat the drop.
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