The Premier League weekend begins on Friday night when Kenilworth Road opens its doors to top flight football for the first time in 31 years when the famous old ground stages the match between Luton Town and West Ham United.
These two teams have made very different starts to the season with the Hatters losing both of their Premier League outings so far while the Hammers have two wins and a draw from their first three matches of the campaign.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channels with the build-up at a new look Kenilworth Road beginning at 7pm ahead of the kick off at 8pm.
Luton Town
It has been a bit of a baptism of fire in terms of the start to Premier League life for Luton Town. The Championship play-off winners would probably be aware that their season won’t be dictated by what they do away to Brighton and Chelsea though, they will know that their home form will dictate their fortunes in their first Premier League campaign. That makes this a big match for the home side, but it was always going to be anyway with home supporters having waited 31 years for this occasion to come around.
Luton boss Rob Edwards will know that his defence will have to improve if they are to achieve anything competitive this term and he has already moved in the final week of the transfer window to address that situation. The positive thing for him will be that his team look like they will cause teams trouble going the other way and with players still gelling into the environment we can only expect them to get better in that department too.
West Ham United
There was a lot of doom and gloom around West Ham United heading into the season after the loss of Declan Rice following a campaign where they were way too low down the Premier League table for their liking. What was quickly forgotten though is the two seasons prior to that they were competing for places in the top six of the division and have moved to replace Declan Rice so perhaps that negative vibe people had was ill placed.
Even West Ham fans probably didn’t expect their side to pick up seven points from three matches which included a home match against Chelsea and an away game against Brighton. When you consider that the money that the Hammers are still spending will lead to players having to gel there is a chance that we haven’t seen the best of West Ham yet, which will be encouraging for all of those who follow them.
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Team News
Luton boss Rob Edwards will be without Dan Potts, Jordan Clark and Gabe Osho while new signing Tegen Mengi may need to wait for his debut. Ross Barkley is set for a first Premier League appearance at Kenilworth Road.
West Ham United manager David Moyes will have defender Nayef Aguerd available after he served his suspension last week. New signing Mohammed Kudus will be hoping to make his debut but Tomas Soucek is out after suffering a head injury at Brighton.
Betting
We should be in for quite some occasion at Kenilworth Road, a venue which comes alive under the floodlights anyway but will be even more amped up with this being the first home game Luton Town have played in the Premier League. I’m way too emotionally involved to give a balanced opinion on any of the main markets but I’m more than happy to get involved in one of the side markets where we can get stuck into a big price.
That comes in the 2/1 on Luton to have the most corners in the match. They might not have been competitive on the scoreboard so far this season but they have been when it comes to corners and that is no surprise when you consider how high their wing-backs play. Luton actually won the corner count at Brighton in their opening match of the season despite only seeing 29% of the ball. They lost 6-4 at Chelsea last week but even that was much better than West Ham fared against the Blues. West Ham lost that match 9-3 in terms of corners and that was as good as it has got for them in the corner stakes. They lost 10-4 at Bournemouth and 17-4 at Brighton last week. Luton will push men forward at home and the 2/1 on them to land the most corners looks to big to me.
Tips
Back Luton Most Corners for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with BetVictor
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