West Ham United will play hosts to Lyon at the London Stadium for the first leg of the Europa League quarter-finals with the Hammers set to play out their first ever fixture this deep into a European competition.
The Premier League side turned in arguably their greatest ever result in the last round as they beat the serial winners of the Europa League, Sevilla, across two legs with a 2-1 aggregate scoreline after losing the first leg in Spain 1-0.
A night we will never forget 🤩Get in the #UEL mood by reliving all of the action from our massive 2-0 win against Sevilla in the round of 16! That atmosphere was a different level 👏— West Ham United (@WestHam) April 5, 2022
A night we will never forget 🤩Get in the #UEL mood by reliving all of the action from our massive 2-0 win against Sevilla in the round of 16! That atmosphere was a different level 👏
Tomas Soucek levelled up the tie just before half time in West Ham’s home fixture with a trademark header, before Ukraine superstar, Andriy Yarmolenko, scored the club's most important European goal of all time to take them into the quarter-finals.
David Moyes’ exceptional form with the club has therefore continued, and against all the odds, West Ham are now just behind Barcelona and RB Leipzig as the favourites to lift the Europa League trophy.
West Ham would lose to Spurs a few days later in the Premier League, however, but they did manage to edge past Everton 2-1 on home soil last time out to return to winning ways.
The Hammers have also been lucky in the draw by getting matched with Lyon, who despite not losing since the end of February when they lost to Lille, are sitting ninth in Ligue 1 in what is one of their worst seasons in modern times.
Worse yet for the French giants, they have scored just 43 times in the league compared to West Ham's 51, and as they have won only 12 games from 30 in Ligue 1, they’re going to need every man turning up here in order to take back a solid result to the Groupama Stadium against a resilient Premier League side.
Lyon managed to edge past Porto in the last round as they narrowly beat them 2-1 on aggregate and even delivered the club's only home loss of the entire season when they won 1-0 in Porto, which was just the second time they had lost all campaign.
Moussa Dembele has often been the difference for Lyon this season as he scored the decisive goal to get them past the Portuguese giants, and he now has 13 goals this season in all competitions - only Jarrod Bowen can match this from a West Ham point of view.
Forebet predicts a game of under 2.5 goals here and for this first leg to be a draw before heading back to France.