West Ham vs Brentford Odds
| West Ham Odds | +150 |
| Brentford Odds | +175 |
| Draw | +250 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -134 / +105 |
West Ham will try to snap out of an eight-match winless run in all competitions when they host a resurgent Brentford side grinding through a brutal portion of the schedule in Monday's Premier League clash at the London Stadium.
The Hammers have yet to win in 2024, and bad went to worse last weekend when winter loan signing Kalvin Phillips was sent off for his second booking in the second half of a 2-0 loss at Nottingham Forest.
Brentford have lost four-of-six since the return of Ivan Toney from an eight-month suspension, but all four of those defeats have come against the current top five, including Tuesday's 1-0 home loss to Manchester City.
This will be only the sixth all-time Premier League meeting between these sides, with Brentford having won all five previous meetings.
Read on for my West Ham vs Brentford prediction.
West Ham
Jarrod Bowen has 11 goals and James Ward-Prowse has six assists, but if there was any doubt over who was the most important player for David Moyes' West Ham squad, it has been answered by the ongoing absence of Lucas Paqueta.
The Brazilian playmaker departed with a calf injury late in the first half of a 2-0 victory at Arsenal in late December, then could play only 13 minutes in his attempted comeback in an FA Cup Third-Round tie against Bristol City.
Paqueta has been reported to have returned to training in the last week, but there's uncertainty over whether he could be available on Monday. If he's not, recent history suggests the Hammers will find life exceedingly difficult. They've only scored four times with Paqueta off the pitch since that initial injury against the Gunners, and two of those have come from the penalty spot.
Meanwhile, Phillips will miss the encounter as he serves a one-match suspension for his double booking, which could offer a badly needed reset for the Manchester City loanee who has made more negative contributions than positive ones for Moyes' men.
Amid all the bad news in the narrow picture, in the broader sense maybe there's some regression here to what the analytics would have projected. West Ham's -12.6 expected goal difference is near the bottom of the league, and with a -8 goal differential they're the only top-half team to have scored fewer than they have conceded.
Brentford
It turns out eight months away could not prevent Ivan Toney from losing his scoring touch, but it hasn't been enough by itself for the Bees to earn results consistently again.
Then again, it's rare that a team plays four matches against top-five PL sides in a run of just six games, and that's exactly what Brentford have been staring at since Toney's return.
The English striker has scored four goals in his six games back, and yet it hasn't mattered in losses to Tottenham, Liverpool and twice to Manchester City. The second game played this past Tuesday was a rescheduled fixture from December, when the Cityzens were off in the Middle East winning the FIFA Club World Cup.
But there's also no denying that some long-term injuries to other key contributors are probably making it difficult on Thomas Frank's side, with or without Toney. Chief among them: defenders Ethan Pinnock and Rico Henry, and forward Bryan Mbuemo, who scored nine goals last season and has seven this year.
Even so, Brentford's three multiple-goal performances in their last six league games since Toney's return follow just one in the Bees' previous eight. And they've beaten both their foes outside the top five in that span, Nottingham Forest 3-2 and Wolverhampton Wanderers 2-0.
West Ham vs Brentford
Prediction
One thing that stands out when looking at West Ham's recent run is that they've conceded to just about every opponent's best scoring threat over the stretch. In order: Ben Brereton Diaz, Dominic Solanke, Alejandro Garnacho, Bukayo Saka and Taiwo Awoniyi have all found the net against the Hammers in the last five games.
Despite all that, West Ham have still preserved their relatively strong home record — having been beaten only twice in the league — and Brentford for all its promising play is still unproven in its road form.
That doesn't mean the Bees can't win here, but it makes the price a lot less appealing than it might be otherwise. And it makes the better play backing Toney — the best Premier League goal scorer who isn't Erling Haaland — to find the net instead at +150 odds and an implied 40.0% probability. You could probably go as low as even money on this, though that might impact the size of my wager.
Aside from that, there's not much else I'd play pregame, especially with Paqueta's status in question.
