West Ham United vs NK Domzale – UEFA Europa League – Preview

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Sreya

West Ham United will play their first game at the new Olympic Park Stadium, London when they take on NK Domzale in the second leg of the third round UEFA Europa League qualifier.

Slaven Bilic’s side went down in a shocking 2-1 defeat to the Slovenian side and must overturn the one-goal deficit to progress to the play-offs. Mark Noble had equalized after Domzale winger Matic Crnic gave the home side an early lead but the excellent winger scored his second goal of the night to give the lesser known club a crucial advantage going into the second leg.

West Ham hardly performed to match everyone’s expectations and were lucky not to have fallen further behind as Adrian made an impressive double save in the second half to keep the deficit at a solitary goal.

West Ham United will be without the injured Aaron Creswell and the unfit Angelo Ogbonna and James Collins other than missing Dimitri Payet who will join the squad later this week.

“It was disappointing last week. We wanted to go there and get a result. Tomorrow we have an opportunity to put things right, and we need to do it. We want to be in the next round. It’s important for the Club to be in Europe because we want to grow.

As players, we want to experience it and we want to progress. We want to make sure we get the right result to proceed. We’re ready for the task that lies ahead of us. We are going to approach the game like we approach all games.”

– Winston Reid, West Ham United.

According to Head-2-Head statistics, NK Domzale won the only game played so far between these two clubs. The Slovenian club continued their unbeaten start to the season as they drew against Maribor in the domestic league.

West Ham United will be the favorites in spite of their loss in the first leg and are likely to progress to the play-offs with a 1-0 win being the most probable result for this game.