Has to be North London Derby for me, as I am a Gunner, but Arsenal vs Man Utd comes really close. Lately our games with Man City is something that I cannot wait for as well. Which ones would be your favourites?
Has to be North London Derby for me, as I am a Gunner, but Arsenal vs Man Utd comes really close. Lately our games with Man City is something that I cannot wait for as well. Which ones would be your favourites?
Arsenal v Spurs is the only local rivalry where both teams have been mostly evenly matched for the past decade or so. The other big local rivalries in England are actually pretty one-sided now. Liverpool v Everton is always a win for Liverpool. Man Utd v Man City is skewed to Man City. West Ham have been too inconsistent for the past decade to be considered a major rival of any of the London teams. Chelsea v Spurs and Chelsea v Arsenal are big games but from what I’ve seen, people aren’t really bothered about Chelsea because they are mostly seen as an artificially propped up team (rightly or wrongly).
I think the biggest games of the calendar are still Man Utd v Liverpool and Arsenal v Man Utd. Those games still have a lot of needle in them irrespective of form and league position.
As a west ham fan yes we are inconsistent overall but if we look at the past all games starting from 19/20 season for west ham v Chelsea, spurs, and arsenal:
West Ham v Chelsea:
West ham 4 wins, Chelsea 4 wins 1 draw
West Ham v arsenal:
West Ham 1 win, arsenal 6 wins 2 draws
West Ham v Spurs:
West ham
West ham 2 wins, Spurs 4 wins 2 draws
Yes we (West ham) don’t have an overall winning record agasint any of these teams but I think it shows we cannot be ignored for these London derbies. They are usually pretty close matches with very few 3-0 sort of wins.
There will always be tension when we play these three teams. Never use to with arsenal was more friendly but since the whole rice saga it’s become a bit more spicy.
Well said ⚒️⚒️⚒️
Who would you guys generally say it’s ranked in order of hatred? Millwall,then?
Yes Millwall traditionally but its weird. If we were to play them tomorrow yes there would be alot of hype about the game, the history, the violence etc. And there probably would be some violence.
Men who in their youth got up to no good and want one more scrap. Or now there are some younger “hooligans” who would want to start something because they’ve heard about the history etc etc.
But normal fans, fans who go to the game for the sport, and fans like me 1000s of miles away who get up at 4:30am to watch them I don’t think we’d be THAT bothered. We don’t really have that recent history or recent knowledge about the weight of the rivalry. Yes it would be cool to see that match and we’d know about the bad blood but that’s about it.
Where as with Chelsea and spurs because we play each other, at minimum, twice a year there is alot of recent history, story lines, great wins, close losses etc that all add to the importance of the game and the desire to win. Plus we interact with those fan bases more whether in person or via social media that adds that layer of competition.
TLDR: Millwall historically our biggest rival but if you asked many west ham fans my age (28) or younger if they’d rather beat millwall in a cup competition or spurs/Chelsea I think most would pick spurs/Chelsea bc millwall are kinda irrelevant to us in the past 20 years.
Thanks. As a Brentford fan I was fearing you’d call Brentford v Fulham close but of course it’s pretty one sided with Fulham getting battered everywhere they go.