West Ham Untied are looking to avoid becoming the latest Premier League team to be eliminated from the FA Cup when they head to third-tier Derby County tonight.

West Ham might field a weakened team, with their priority being preserving their status in the top flight.

The Hammers are a point and two places outside the relegation zone in the league after a poorer-than-expected first half of the season. Derby are fourth in League One.

It is the last of the fourth-round matches in the famous old competition, in which the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle have already been ousted.

Here’s everything you need to know about the FA Cup fourth round tie:

When is Derby vs West Ham?

The match will kick off at 7.45pm GMT on 29 January.

Is it on TV?

Derby vs West Ham will be shown live on ITV 4, as well as online on the ITV X platform.

What did the managers say?

Derby boss Paul Warne does not see Monday’s FA Cup tie against West Ham as the same David versus Goliath battle as his first encounter with the Hammers.

Warne, who joined Derby from Rotherham in September, has history of upsetting the Hammers during his time as a player with the Millers in the second tier in 2003. He was part of the squad that beat Glenn Roeder’s newly relegated side in a game made famous for the London club refusing to get changed inside the Millmoor dressing rooms.

West Ham, with the likes of David James, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe in their squad, felt the facilities were not up to scratch and instead changed at their hotel. That provided suitable motivation for Ronnie Moore’s side as they won 1-0, arguably one of the greatest results in their history, with Roeder getting sacked the next day.

“This is one game that stuck in my memory, which is very bad,” Warne said. “We used it as a weapon. We were told that the kitman visited the stadium and told the manager the size of the dressing room wasn’t big enough and was dismissive of the level of facilities.

“That got us fired up in our dressing room. We’d never heard of any team refusing to get changed in the dressing room, let alone two pro teams. It is unheard of. That fuelled us up, like ‘who do they think they are?’

“At the time they weren’t in good form, we were doing OK so it was a perfect storm, they were on a sticky wicket, we were the home side fighting for everything and we had been fired up by, in the words of our manager, the big cheeses looking down at us. It did wind us up.”

West Ham come into the game lacking forward options. Losing Danny Ings to injury was a major blow for David Moyes, who spent £12m to prise the 30-year-old frontman from Aston Villa in a bid to inject more goals into his side.

Moyes is already without Italian forward Gianluca Scamacca with a knee injury, leaving Antonio as West Ham’s only fit senior striker for Monday’s FA Cup tie at Derby.

“Unfortunately Danny picked up an injury in the first 15 or 20 seconds of the game,” said Moyes. “We don’t think it’s that bad and he’d be cup-tied on Monday anyway so we’ve got a little bit of grace there.

“Hopefully he’s not going to miss too much. He’s had an injection in his knee and hopefully he can get back quickly.”

Read More