West Ham v Lyon: Europa League quarter-final, first leg – live! | Football

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8.10pm BST 20:10

8 min: You know how some matches set off at a thunderous pace? This is not one of them.

8.09pm BST 20:09

7 min: Lyon make it into the box, with Dembele holding the ball up well, Lukaku-style, but again the final ball is poor.

8.08pm BST 20:08

5 min: Gusto, Lyon’s pacey right-winger, has plenty of time to get a cross in, but he overcooks it.

Updated at 8.08pm BSTE

8.06pm BST 20:06

3 min: Lyon are being leisurely, West Ham more direct. Antonio gets his head on a punt from Areola but can’t quite find Bowen with his flick-on.

8.02pm BST 20:02

Declan Rice bumps fists with the Lyon captain – Moussa Dembele. Rice needs to avoid a yellow if he wants to play in the second leg.

8.00pm BST 20:00

West Ham have won their last four at home in all competitions, their best such sequence for ten years. But then Lyon have won their last six away matches in the Europa League. Something’s gotta give.

7.58pm BST 19:58

The crowd are absolutely loving it. The London Stadium is rocking as it hasn’t rocked since the Rolling Stones played there a few years ago.

Come on you Irons! Photograph: Simon Dael/REX/Shutterstock

Updated at 8.04pm BSTE

7.48pm BST 19:48

David Moyes is talking to BT, sounding calm. “Slightly different game,” he says, “It’s the first leg. We’d like to win, but it’s not settled tonight.”

He says he picked Ryan Fredericks (over Ben Johnson) partly because of the pace of Karl Toko-Ekambi – who, as he doesn’t add, is on the bench.

7.10pm BST 19:10

Teams: Lyon unchanged

Lyon (4-2-3-1?): Lopes; Gusto, Boateng, Lukeba, Emerson; Mendes, Ndombele; Faivre, Paqueta, Aouar; Dembele.

Subs: Pollersbeck, Da Silva, Denayer, Barcola, Henrique, Dubois, Reine-Adelaide, Barcola, Kadewere, Tete, Toko-Ekambi.

7.05pm BST 19:05

Teams: West Ham as expected

West Ham United (4-2-3-1): Areola; Fredericks, Dawson, Zouma, Cresswell; Soucek, Rice; Bowen, Benrahma, Fornals; Antonio.

Subs: Fabianski, Johnson, Coufal, Masuaku, Diop, Alese, Noble, Kral, Perkins, Randolph, Vlasic, Yarmolenko.

7.00pm BST 19:00

Preamble

Evening everyone and welcome to West Ham’s biggest European game since … well, I make it 1981. That one didn’t go too well: after storming into the quarter-finals of the Cup-Winners’ Cup, they went and lost 4 -1 at home to Dinamo Tbilisi. But that was then, so long ago that one of their regulars was Frank Lampard (Senior). And this is now, when they’ve just seen off Sevilla, who pretty much own the Europa League.

Manchester United, eat your heart out. David Moyes is not only looking down on United in the league table: he’s still in Europe and they’re not. But he won’t be allowing himself much of a gloat because his team face a tricky assignment here. At 538.com, Nate Silver’s prediction machine, West Ham are favored to make it through this round, but only by 55 per cent to 45.

Lyon waltzed through their group, winning five games and losing none. Last time they came to the UK, in September, they beat the mighty Rangers. They’re erratic in Ligue 1, where they lie ninth, but efficient in the Europa: in the last round, against Porto, they won 1-0 away before drawing 1-1 at home. It could be the loudest night at the London Stadium since the win over Sevilla.

Kick-off is at 8pm, so I’ll be back soon after 7 with the teams.

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