Peeeeeeeeeeep! Play gets underway, as bubbles float gently across the pitch.

The teams are out! West Ham in their claret and blue, Wolves in their old gold. It’s nice not to see the two teams are they are meant to be.

Just on Gary O’Neil drinking 20 cups of tea a day, I’m also concerned about the amount of time he’s spending in the toilet. If an average mug of tea is 300ml, and he’s drinking 20, that’s six litres/a lot of liquid.

“Am hoping that when Lopetegui eventually gets given the tin tack that Mark Noble is given the manager’s gig,” emails Ian Burch. “Local boy, club legend, Sullivan loyalist, will turn down the offer of a club car so he can travel to home games on the bus, used to dealing with irate Hammers fans invading the pitch and can instil discipline in the squad by coming up with a rota for the players to sweep up the dressing room after matches. He can also be relied upon to re-instate liquor on the players pre-match meal of pie and mash, a ban which lost Lopetegui the dressing room on day one”.

Should reiterate that West Ham’s performance against Leicester, at least offensively, was not bad at all. They had 31 shots, with an xG of 3.1. No team has had more and gone on to lose the game in more than seven years.

Lopetegui speaks!

On Antonio:

The more important thing is that the person, the father, the son, the brother that he is, is OK. We talked with him today.

On Wolves:

Our approach is to do well against a good team. It’s not going to be an easy task. After we lost at Leicester, there were a few positives but the most important thing is the match today.

Is it possible to ‘lose the dressing room’ based upon your caffeine intake? Absolute headloss here, surely.

Not every Wolves fan has taken this tea revelation well.

“No wonder we’re so [awful] if our manager spends all his waking hours stood by a [bleeding] kettle”, tweeted one supporter on Friday.

Feels very odd that Lopetegui has left Paqueta on the bench again, particularly as he did so for West Ham’s last outing, a 3-1 defeat at Leicester. That scoreline doesn’t tell the whole story – the Hammers were very good in large periods – but ultimately weren’t clinical enough. West Ham have other creators in Kudus, Bowen and Summerville but Paqueta omission is glaring once again. It’s also interesting that despite Antonio’s accident, Füllkrug still doesn’t get a starting berth tonight.

Wolves make three changes from the XI that lost heavily at Everton, which is hardly a surprise. Johnstone, Semedo and Toti all come into the line-up. Where is José Sa? In last season’s Premier League, the Portuguese had the best goals prevented numbers of any goalkeeper based on Opta’s expected goals on target faced metric. He’s had an inconsistent season this campaign, and clashed with Wolves supporters following the 4-2 home defeat to Bournemouth earlier this month. Hwang is a quality option on the bench, even if he has yet to fire properly this season due to form and fitness.

The teams!

Preamble