Man Utd v West Ham: Resurgent Red Devils eye another heavy win

Few Premier League sides can expect to return from a road trip winless at a greater frequency than West Ham, unless they’re playing Tottenham, of course.

Turbulence on their travels is a key factor behind their current position, perched perilously close to the relegation zone and they brace themselves to be dunked back into the drink at Old Trafford, where their fight to avoid drowning will take a turn for the worse.

Odds for a Manchester United victory are 4/11 with Ladbrokes, in stark contrast to the Hammers’ 8/1, no doubt inspired from seven failures to win from eight league away outings. The draw that they’d accept with the gratitude and gusto of a lottery winner can be backed at 7/2, alternatively.

The only chance the east Londoners have of landing either of these long-priced positive results is if they can resist the attacking advances of the home team, because they’re not going to score themselves.

They’ve brought no goals back with them from five of those aforementioned eight games, with only three sides managing fewer goals than the mere five they’ve recorded. The emphasis of just how dire their situation in front of goal is comes in the form of the fact that three of these strikes were registered in one anomaly of a game at White Hart Lane.

What spells yet more doom for travelling Irons is that they’ve failed to put the ball in the Man United net at Old Trafford in five successive attempts.

A combination of these two ingredients makes for the perfect pre-match home win to nil pie, available at a very reasonable price of 23/20.

It would have ensured pay out in each of their last three games, but something that may sour the recipe is the fact that United have only kept a solitary clean sheet in their previous six performances at the Theatre of Dreams.

A common occurrence of late is for Man United matches to produce a result either way, but with fewer than 2.5 goals being witnessed.

David Moyes’ boys have won or lost four of their previous five games in a manner that would entitle backers of this particular bet to a payout and 13/5 says it’ll come in again here in their favour, or 14/1 in West Ham’s.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date

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