Blackburn v. West Ham- Oxford, Our Opponents and The Dream.

West Ham face Blackburn Rovers this Sunday at Ewood Park with the Hammers struggling to find form in the Premier League having only won once out of their last five games. But this is not the Premier League, it is the FA Cup and anything can happen.

What has happened to Reece Oxford?

Who? Yes, this was the reaction of most football fans when the teams got announced for West Ham’s first game of the season against Arsenal.

Now, everyone knows who Reece Oxford is.

His stunning man of the match performance against Arsenal meant that he was on the tip of everyone’s tongues and forced himself into Slaven Bilic’s plans. Even if he won’t admit it, he nullified the threat of Mesut Özil. Since then, Özil has made 17 assists, 7 more than any other player.

That performance was rewarded with a start against Leicester, only for Oxford to be taken off after 45 minutes. Since then, he has only appeared thrice for West Ham playing a grand total of 39 minutes in all competitions. Yes, I know that he is only 17 years old but he has shown signs that he is capable of playing at the highest level.

We all thought that he was off on loan to Charlton in January in order to get more playing time but according to the Telegraph, Charlton’s manager did not even know who Oxford was! That broke down so what better opportunity for him to get some game time than in a FA Cup clash against a side struggling in the Championship.

Will Oxford start again for West Ham this season? I’d bet against it.

How have Blackburn played this season?

Our opponents on Sunday currently sit at 18th in the Championship having ended a nine-match winless run in the league after a 3-0 win over Fulham yesterday. West Ham’s record against Blackburn in recent history has been excellent with the former failing to lose any of their previous ten games against the latter.

Although Blackburn did put three past Fulham yesterday, they haven’t posed a significant goal threat this season having only scored 28 times in 30 games whilst conceding 27. According to WhoScored, Blackburn are ‘very strong’ at attacking set-pieces, aerial duels and prefer to attack down the middle and the left. When it comes to defending through ball attacks however, they struggle. This makes for good reading with the likes of Dimitri Payet, Alex Song and Mark Noble in our team and the passing quality they possess.

With over 50% of Blackburn’s goals in the Championship coming from set-pieces, we can not afford for our defenders to switch off and give away unnecessary free-kicks.

The last time we played them in the FA Cup we won 4-2. Let’s hope for a repeat of that on Sunday!

Number four for the Hammers?

We haven’t had the best of luck in the FA Cup in the previous five seasons having only reached the quarter finals once and being knocked out in the third round thrice. Should the favourites in each fifth round tie win, the quarter finals will be made up of us, Arsenal, West Brom, Watford, Everton, Spurs, Chelsea and Manchester United.

In previous years West Ham would have been seen as the team that every team wanted to be drawn against, an ‘easy’ tie. But this season the Hammers have made a habit of beating the big teams. Out of five games against the ‘traditional big four’, we have won four and drawn once. With most of these big teams being either in the Europa League or the Champions League and us only having two competitions to focus on, we could certainly go all the way.

How good would it be to enter the Olympic stadium with a trophy in our hands?