Brentford welcome West Ham United to Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday (3pm kick-off GMT).
The Bees sit 12th after their opening five Premier League fixtures and lost 3-2 to Tottenham Hotspur last time out; the Hammers, under new head coach Julen Lopetegui, are two places and two points worse off than the west Londoners.
Analysis, team news, match officials and more. Here's everything you need to know ahead of the game.
Pre-match analysis
Richard Cole, Playmaker Stats: Kudus key to Hammers’ attacking output
Brentford have the opportunity to get back to winning ways after two difficult Premier League fixtures as they welcome a West Ham United team that has yet to click under their new manager.
The Hammers are now in their post-David Moyes era, but things haven't been going smoothly for new manager Julen Lopetegui who suffered his third home loss in a row last weekend as his side were beaten 3-0 by Chelsea.
West Ham fans showed their discontent after the game and it's clear that Lopetegui has plenty to work on early in the campaign.
So far this season, the Hammers have accumulated a low total xG of 6.66 – ranking them 17th of the 20 Premier League teams.
Goals are a problem for West Ham so far with only three teams (Crystal Palace, Ipswich Town and Southampton) scoring fewer times than the Hammers (4).
Yet, Lopetegui's side have had a total of 68 shots (only six sides have had more) meaning that they are struggling to create clear-cut chances.
Indeed, of those 68 attempts, only 18 of them were potentially goal-bound ranking them the fourth lowest in the league for shots on target.
Going briefly back to the xG metric, it means that West Ham are averaging just 0.1xG per shot – ranking them bottom in the rankings alongside newly promoted Ipswich Town.
However, we can't dismiss West Ham as an attacking force. Mohammed Kudus has been bright for the Irons while other new signings are yet to get going although they may do soon.
Kudus has more successful take-ons (21) than any other player in the top five UEFA leagues so far this season while also being joint-third for progressive carries (28) and 10th for progressive passes received (41) in the Premier League.
From all five of West Ham's Premier League games so far this season, the Hammers have won one, drawn one, and lost three meaning all of their points have come on the road.
However, this weekend they'll be facing one of only two teams to have won 100 per cent of their home games this season with Brentford and Newcastle United both on two wins from two games.
On top of that, in three Premier League games between the Bees and the Irons at Gtech Community Stadium, Brentford have come out on top in all three – most recently a 3-2 win back in November in which Nathan Collins scored the winner.
Frank will be hoping his side can make it four out of four against West Ham in the league this weekend.
Scout Report
Dan Long, Sky Sports: Lopetegui calls for patience after challenging start to the season
Despite the sale of prized asset Declan Rice to Arsenal for a British record fee last summer, West Ham United - fresh off the back their Europa Conference League triumph in Prague - were flying in the first weeks of last season, with three wins and a draw from the first four catapulting them into the top four.
They lost five of the next seven and dropped into the bottom half - but then they won six of the eight that followed and climbed right back into the top six.
Next, they started the calendar year without a win in their first six league games, with the second-to-last in that run a 6-0 defeat to Arsenal, which was their joint heaviest in the Premier League. Talk about playing with your emotions.
As had been the case in years gone by, European football provided a very welcome distraction. At the same time all of this was going on, the Hammers won their Europa League group with a near-perfect record of five wins from six games.
They reached the quarter-final in the end, with their exit at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen, softened by the fact Xabi Alonso’s side were simply unstoppable in 2023/24.
Their sole aim from there onwards was qualifying for Europe once again, but just two wins in the last 11 games was not enough to get them there. They finished ninth, 11 points behind sixth-place Chelsea, who took the Conference League play-off round berth.
There had been talk of David Moyes waiting until the end of the season to decide whether to sign a new contract at the club, but he ultimately departed when his contract expired after more than 260 games in charge across two separate spells. He left with the highest win percentage of any of the club’s permanent managers (44.59 per cent).
In installing Julen Lopetegui as Moyes’ successor, the Hammers had brought in a manager who had unfinished business in the Premier League after a 27-game spell at Wolves was ended by mutual consent, reportedly after disagreements between the board and the Spaniard.
"My ambition as a coach is always to be better and better, to achieve more and bigger aims and to encourage and improve the players, the team, and to compete because football is about this - to compete,” Lopetegui said after his appointment.
The transfer dealings that followed suggested there was a clear intention to trouble the traditional top-six clubs, too. A total of £132.5 million was spent - the fifth highest amount in the Premier League this summer - to bring in Luis Guilherme, Max Kilman, Crysencio Summerville, Niclas Füllkrug and Aaron Wan-Bissaka, with Guido Rodríguez and Wes Foderingham joining on free transfers.
There was tangible excitement in east London - but expectations are far from being lived up to at the moment. The Hammers picked up nine points from their first five last term, but have only four so far, which is the same amount they picked up in 2022/23, when they flirted with relegation for much of the campaign before finishing 14th.
Most concerningly, they have lost all three league games at the London Stadium. The most recent of those came last weekend, when Chelsea took advantage of some poor defending to win 3-0, which brought boos from the home crowd.
“They have the right to complain,” said Lopetegui. “We know this. That's why we are the only solution to change this. We have to do better, all of us, but first of all, me. We have to improve but it's the start of the season. We have a lot of time to do this."
He is right: time is very much on West Ham’s side. The board will not make a knee-jerk decision on his future, either - the pressure Moyes withstood at times illustrates that. But this club has become accustomed to European football over the last three seasons and this time around there is none.
Lopetegui will be laser-focused on ensuring this is nothing more than a one-off.
In the Dugout
Julen Lopetegui
A goalkeeper during his playing days, Julen Lopetegui started his youth career at Real Sociedad before joining Real Madrid Castilla - the La Liga giants’ B team - as a 19-year-old in 1985.
He eventually went on to play one game for Real’s first team under John Toshack at the end of their 1989/90 title-winning season.
He then moved on to now-defunct CD Logrones in the summer of 1991, playing over 100 league games as they maintained their La Liga status, which spanned from 1987/88 to 1994/95.
He travelled as part of the Spain squad to the 1994 World Cup in the USA, shortly after his one and only cap.
A three-year, five-league game spell with Barcelona followed, before a successful end to his playing career, achieving promotion to La Liga with Rayo Vallecano.
He retired in 2002 and moved into coaching. His first two jobs, with Vallecano and Real Madrid B, weren’t spectacular but it was with Spain’s youth teams he began to have success.
He won European Championships at under-19 and under-21 level, before taking charge of Porto in 2014.
He took the Portuguese side to the quarter-final of the Champions League in his first season, but a poor start to the following campaign saw him relieved of his duties in January 2016.
His next role came with Spain. He led them to the World Cup finals in Russia in 2018, winning nine of his 10 qualifiers, but was sacked on the eve of the tournament after it was announced he would be taking up the Real Madrid job.
That stint as Real Madrid manager lasted just 14 matches, of which he won six, and culminated in a 5-1 El Clásico defeat.
Then came a much more successful three-year spell with Sevilla, which included winning the Europa League in 2019/20 and two successive fourth-place finishes.
He was sacked in October 2022 and joined Wolves the following month, but stayed in the post only until August 2023, when he left by mutual consent.
On 23 May, he signed a two-year deal to replace David Moyes as West Ham manager.
Team news
Frank: Nørgaard a close call
Brentford head coach Thomas Frank provided a squad update in his pre-match press conference on Friday.
Christian Nørgaard missed last weekend’s defeat at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with a “minor injury”, and Frank revealed that the captain could return against the Hammers.
“It’s going to be a close call,” said the Bees boss. “He’s been training today and yesterday, so we need to see if he’s ready to start.”
Frank was also asked about Igor Thiago (knee), Paris Maghoma (ankle) and Rico Henry (knee).
“Paris will play a game next week,” he said.
“Rico is a little bit further – no setbacks but he is not ready yet.
“[Thiago] is progressing, but it’s still too far away for me to excited about him coming back. He is not on the grass.”
The Gameplan
With Will Pugh, sports journalist for Sun Sport and co-founder of the We Are West Ham podcast
Will Pugh, sports journalist for Sun Sport and co-founder of the We Are West Ham podcast, explains how Julen Lopetegui is likely to set up his side on Saturday:
“Paquetá, Kudus and Summerville as the attacking three behind Bowen, assuming Fullkrug is still not fit.
“One thing Brentford fans should expect is Aaron Wan-Bissaka spending most of the game in Brentford’s half.”
Last Premier League starting XI v Chelsea (3-4-2-1): Areola; Mavropanos, Álvarez, Kilman; Wan-Bissaka, Rodríguez, Paquetá, Emerson; Kudus, Summerville; Bowen
Read our full interview with Will Pugh here.
Match Officials
Hooper the man in the middle
Referee: Simon Hooper
Assistants: Adrian Holmes and Simon Long
Fourth official: Tom Nield
VAR: David Coote
Simon Hooper, who tried to make it as a professional footballer in his youth, has taken charge of 31 Brentford games as both he and the Bees have worked their way up the divisions.
Hooper's most recent Gtech assignment was the west Londoners’ 4-2 defeat to Newcastle United on the final day of last season.
The experienced Wiltshire referee took charge of 35 games last term, showing 143 yellow cards and three reds.
Last Meeting at the Gtech
Brentford 3 West Ham 2 (Premier League, 4 November 2023)
Brentford came from behind to earn a third-straight Premier League victory, as they beat West Ham United 3-2 in another London derby triumph.
Neal Maupay opened the scoring in the first half, heading home his first goal since returning to the club in the summer transfer window, before a sensational acrobatic effort from Mohammed Kudus and a close-range strike from Jarrod Bowen put the visitors ahead.
But the Bees ended the game on top thanks to an own goal from Konstantinos Mavropanos and Nathan Collins' thumping header.