Tuesday Night Existentialism: Here We Go Again

 

There is a particular sort of football misery reserved for Tuesday nights.

The weekend has barely had time to leave the system before you're expected to drag yourself back to the London Stadium, convince yourself that this time might be different, and then spend 90 minutes discovering that it probably isn't.

Tonight, West Ham United welcome Wolverhampton Wanderers to East London, and if we're being completely honest, the pre-match mood isn't exactly overflowing with optimism. Wolves arrive having thumped Stoke City 4-1 at the weekend and looking like a side that has suddenly remembered football is supposed to be fun.

Under César Peixoto, the visitors have quickly developed a more adventurous and fluid style. Their midfield is moving with purpose, their confidence is growing, and they currently look rather better organised than a team that has spent the summer wondering what exactly it's supposed to be doing.

West Ham, meanwhile, remain somewhere in the middle of an identity crisis.

A summer of significant departures has stripped away some of the raw pace that previously offered an escape route whenever things became complicated. The new challenge is to control games through the middle, make better use of possession and, ideally, turn every set piece into a minor diplomatic incident for the opposition.

Konstantinos Mavropanos (if he plays) could once again have an important role to play, both in holding together a defence that has occasionally looked like it was assembled during a fire drill and in trying to recreate his set-piece heroics from the previous meeting between these sides.

There is, at least, one reasonably comforting statistic to cling to.

The last time Wolves came to the London Stadium, West Ham put four past them without reply back in April. Admittedly, that feels like ancient history now, and Tuesday night's game has all the ingredients of a very different proposition.

Still, football has a funny habit of making fools of anyone who thinks they know what's coming.

So perhaps there is hope after all.

Or perhaps I'm just preparing the excuses early.