West Ham face Leicester at Upton Park on Saturday, just three points off the top, but with an injury list that shows no sign of shortening.
Loanees David Bentley and Henri Lansbury have knee injuries, as does Carlton Cole, Matt Taylor has a calf problem and James Tomkins a groin.
Papa Bouba Diop will be given a medical before the game to assess if he can play as Sam Allardyce may be forced to go with Baldock either out wide or as part of a two up front, due to a lack of midfield options.
Leicester have their own problems, having lost to Millwall 3-0 last week, manager Sven-Goran Eriksson was sacked leaving a caretaker double team of Jon Rudkin and Mike Stowell in charge. Captain Matt Mills is facing his final suspended game, but Paul Gallagher could return up front.
On paper both these two teams probably have the best squads in the Championship and at the start of the season many fans would have picked this fixture out as one of the biggest of the year and certainly one of the closest fought.
But neither has set the league alight so far; West Ham have lurched from insipid mediocrity to an unstoppable powerhouse and back again from week to week.
They have not been able to impose themselves as much as they would have liked and have had to resort to parking the bus on a few occasions, but then this is a very hard league to get out of, with more and more teams playing a pressing type of game.
The run of last five games exemplifies this; beat Portsmouth at home 4-3, lost at home to Ipswich 1-0, beat Blackpool 4-0, lost away toSouthampton 1-0, beat Brighton away 1-0.
No team in the league has played as expected, newly promoted Southampton and Brighton have continued where they left off in League 1so both the recent fixtures have been tough away games and both could have gone either way so one win and one defeat was probably all that could be expected.
Monday’s game at the Amex was a scrappy, hard fought affair as the Seagulls had most of the possession but failed to create any chances and West Ham snatched a first half goal from Kevin Nolan’s tenacity on the edge of the Brighton penalty area.
Leicester have lost two out of their last three games, butonly four all season and given some of the players at their disposal it would be a hard match to predict, given the inconsistency shown from the Hammers.
So far West Ham have found home games hard to deal with, not knowing whether to sit back and counter—attack as they do on the road, or to push more midfielders forward to dominate teams.
Given the doggedness of the West Ham back four it could be another low scoring encounter, unless the Foxes capitulate as Blackpool did and allow Carew to run riot in the box.
Sometimes playing a team just after they have sacked a manager is a dreadful experience, you half expect them to suddenly play out of their skins.
But this doesn’t fell like that kind of game as Eriksson was not under pressure from the fans and did not seem to have lost the dressing room.
Despite the Milllwall defeat his departure seemed inexplicable, it was not an unrecoverable situation; 14th in the league, but only two points off the play-off places, teams have come back from
worse than that to still get promoted, Sunderland under Roy Keane spring to mind.
It should be an interesting game between the supposed title contenders at the start of the season, but depending on who Leicester appoint they may have removed any hope of promotion by getting rid of Eriksson.
Although some of the performances have not been convincing, West Ham are in a good position, and roughly where Allardyce would want to be at this stage.
Whether they can keep the pace with so many injuries will be another matter as the teams challenging now may not be the same ones towards the last few months of the season.
