Europa League - Bayer Leverkusen vs West Ham United
Match Time: 12-04-2024 03:00 Friday (GMT+8)
Football Livescore | Match Prediction & Tips
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Bayer Leverkusen
With 41 games done and dusted in the 2023-24 campaign, Bayer Leverkusen have extraordinarily managed to avoid defeat in every single one of them, although their glorious sequence was on the cusp of being broken by Qarabag in an unforgettable last-16 encounter.
After returning from the long trip to Azerbaijan with a creditable 2-2 draw under their belts, Alonso's crop stared elimination in the face as Qarabag took a 2-0 second-half lead at the BayArena, but Jeremie Frimpong's strike and an incredible injury-time brace from Patrik Schick completed the mother of all turnarounds.
That sensational 3-2 success represents the second victory of an ongoing six-match winning run for Thursday's ostensibly unstoppable hosts, who have a DFB-Pokal final with Kaiserslautern to look forward to on May 25, and just one more three-point haul will end Bayern Munich's 11-year reign of Bundesliga supremacy.
As Leverkusen edged past Union Berlin 1-0 at the weekend thanks to Florian Wirtz penalty, Alonso's former team suffered a chastening 3-2 loss to Heidenheim, leaving Die Werkself 16 points clear of Bayern and Stuttgart at the Bundesliga summit with only 18 left to fight for.
West Ham United
With the Blues going all the way to continental glory that year, the omens are highly promising for Leverkusen should they manage to replicate the feats of their counterparts from the Premier League, where Liverpool-linked Alonso will not be ending up this year on account of his decision to continue in the BayArena hotseat.
Upcoming foes West Ham have already experienced one frustrating result on German shores in 2024, going down 1-0 to Freiburg in their opening last-16 tie after having a last-gasp penalty appeal waved away, but David Moyes's men righted those wrongs in style with a 5-0 second-leg slaughter.
Slowly building up their continental pedigree, the Europa Conference League holders have now made the quarter-finals in each of their last three appearances in European competition and are yet to suffer last-eight heartbreak, smashing Lyon 4-1 at this stage in the 2021-22 Europa League before German-inflicted semi-final misery versus Eintracht Frankfurt.
The Irons only took two points from the three Premier League games that immediately followed their five-goal romping of Freiburg - throwing away a 3-1 lead to Newcastle United in that sequence - but they returned to victorious ways at the weekend, eking out a 2-1 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers thanks to James Ward-Prowse's goal direct from a corner.
Prediction: Bayer Leverkusen 2-0 West Ham United
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