Chelsea, who headed into the weekend in sixth place, are looking to extend our unbeaten run at home to four games across all competitions.

After a 3-1 success against Wolverhampton Wanderers two Mondays ago, the Blues have the opportunity to land a second league double of the season and nail the Hammers at home for the fifth time in a row.

Graham Potter, who succeeded Julen Lopetegui as West Ham coach on 9 January, will face his former club for the first time since departing Stamford Bridge.

Potter’s three-game spell has resulted in a win, a draw and a loss for the Irons, but across the season they have lost six of their seven games against the current top six by two or more goals. That includes September’s comfortable 3-0 Chelsea win at the London Stadium – which, combined with the 5-0 at the Bridge in May, made it eight unanswered goals for the west Londoners over our past two encounters.

Team news

On Friday, Enzo Maresca confirmed there were no new injury concerns in his squad as they entered the weekend's training sessions, meaning he should have the same players available this week as he did for the trip to Manchester City.

‘It is exactly the same as for the last game,’ said the Blues head coach in his pre-match press conference on Friday. ‘Wes [Fofana] is out, Romeo [Lavia] is out, Benoit [Badiashile] is out. The rest are okay.’

The Italian also gave his verdict on our opponents, who have taken four points from the three matches overseen by Graham Potter, and highlighted a change of approach under the former Blues head coach.

‘They are very aggressive,’ added Maresca. ‘I have watched the four games with Graham in charge and they try to be very aggressive – even in the last game against Aston Villa.

'So it will be a tough game like always and in terms of our tactical approach, we have two days to prepare the game and we will see.’

The history

This east-meets-west fixture was first played at Stamford Bridge 101 years ago, in October 1923.

Syd King’s West Ham, promoted the previous spring, had played at the Chelsea ground five months earlier – beating Bolton 5-2 in an FA Cup semi-final which carried them to the ‘white horse final’ at newly-opened Wembley. There would be no such feast of goals against David Calderhead’s Pensioners. Instead, a 0-0 stalemate was played out in front 50,000 spectators expecting more output from the end-to-end action.

A century later, at the tail-end of last season, west London was celebrating as the Irons were sent home along the disrupted District Line with a five-goal drubbing to digest. Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke, Conor Gallagher and Nicolas Jackson, at the double, filled the scoresheet without reply, for the Blues’ biggest-ever margin of victory in this cross-town derby.

It was the fourth time we had scored five or more against the claret and blue club. In April 1966, a masterly young Peter Osgood was the driving force in a 6-2 success, featuring the rare sight of a notch for Ron Harris – albeit from six yards, and followed by his sliced own goal past Peter Bonetti.

In December the same year, the London rivals went toe-to-toe in a mesmerising 5-5 draw, ‘a bizarre extravaganza of tension and excitement, anger and anguish, mistake and counter-mistake’, as Alan Hoby noted in the Sunday Express. While bemoaning his side’s defending, Tommy Docherty admired the way they fought back from 2-0 and 5-3 down to claim a point through Bobby Tambling’s record-equalling 129th league goal for the Blues.

The third instance came in January 2002, when the prolific partnership of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Eidur Gudjohnsen shared four between them, before substitute Mikael Forssell completed a 5-1 victory at the Bridge.

Know this...

Chelsea have won each of the past four meetings with West Ham at Stamford Bridge, scoring 11 times and conceding once.

The Blues have hit five goals in the opening 10 minutes of league games this season, the Hammers have conceded nine in the same time slot.

Mind the gap – Chelsea’s players are the youngest fielded in the Premier League this season (24.1 years old), while West Ham’s are the second oldest (28.9).

Chelsea have a 26 per cent win rate when Stuart Attwell is the referee, but have won the last two, 4-1 at Burnley last season and 3-0 at home to Aston Villa in December.

This week marks one hundred years since Chelsea played Arsenal at Highbury in a match trialing the new offside law, and scored the only goal of the game. The trial was a big success and the change was made for 1925/26.

Nicolas Jackson has netted 11 goals in 14 Premier League London derbies – the most of any player over the last two seasons.

Premier League London table