AFC Wimbledon vs West Ham (19:45 k.o.) Our main focus of the evening will be the London derby taking place at Kings Meadow. Manuel Pellegrini has gotten off to a difficult start as Hammers boss but will be looking to get a first win under his belt this evening. The Chilean won this competition twice as Manchester City manager - could he start another cup run tonight? Our man Jack Rosser is at the game tonight, and thinks this is a big opportunity for West Ham, in more ways than one.<doc-sep>After a three-game winless run, the Hammers grabbed their first win of the season and the defender is optimistic that it will lift their morale West Ham United defender Issa Diop is upbeat that their victory against AFC Wimbledon in Tuesday’s League Cup tie will boost their confidence. The 21-year-old’s strike, as well as Angelo Ogbonna and Javier Hernandez’s efforts, helped Manuel Pellegrini’s men to a comeback 3-1 victory against the League One side. The win ensured that the Hammers ended their three-game winless run following losses to Liverpool, Bournemouth and Arsenal. The youngster, excited with the performance, believes that the victory will lift their morale ahead of their Premier League clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday. “It’s good for our confidence because we lost our first three games, so now we’re focused on Saturday and Wolverhampton and I hope we win this game,” Diop told club website. “I hope I can score again, but I prefer it when we win and I don’t score. Actually, I hope I score and we win, as that’s better!” Reacting to his low swerving effort from 25 yards in the encounter he said: “I received the ball and I shot, so I’m happy for the team. It wasn’t my best goal, as I think I scored a better one for Toulouse with a volley! “It was very hard for us to score a goal because they defended very well. We tried and we tried and we tried and thankfully we scored.”<doc-sep>Hand-me-downs from the Crazy Gang era come with a few caveats these days but Neal Ardley smiles when explaining the induction process, a notch or two more rigorous than at most football clubs, that modern-era newcomers to AFC Wimbledon are required to undergo. “Everyone has to get up and sing a song but we also try and take that a little bit further,” the League One club’s manager says. “There’s a little Q&A where they have to stand up on a chair but it’s not a nice Q&A – it’s very intrusive, about many parts of their lives. They need to be ready and there has to be total honesty. The lads get to find out a little bit before, so they know what buttons to press and what questions to ask. Sometimes a nickname can stick from it but it’s all done in fun.” It still bears little comparison to what went on during Ardley’s playing career and a more relatable throwback will present itself on Tuesday night. West Ham will contest a Carabao Cup tie at the Dons’ tight, creaking Kingsmeadow ground and it does not take too big a stretch to remember a time – 22 occasions to be precise – when this was a top-flight fixture involving the previous incarnation of Wimbledon. Ardley was around for the vast majority of them and the recollections pour freely. Most of them come from visits to Upton Park, where he watched as Wimbledon overturned a 3-0 deficit to win in 1998 and was on the pitch when, 18 months later, Paolo Di Canio scored the improbable scissor-volley that dominates highlights reels to this day. Kingsmeadow will host West Ham on Tuesday night – the stadium has a capacity of 4,850 with 2,265 seats Photograph: TGSPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock “Ben Thatcher and I were laughing about it a while back and saying: ‘You should have stopped him getting that cross in,’” he says. “But it was like: ‘Then you’d never get to see a replay of that goal.’ I just remember thinking: ‘He’s not done that, has he?’ “Whenever I went to West Ham my first thought was: ‘God, I’ve got to run up and down by the Chicken Run.’ They used to scare the life out of you when you were running down the wing. [But] we felt we could rough anyone up; it was part of the makeup. I don’t think West Ham were ever seen as soft. When you went to Upton Park you knew it would be a tough game, and that’s where their struggles have been over the past few years. London Stadium will give them the chance to put a good team together but they will lose a bit of the fear of Upton Park, which was one of their assets.” Two of Ardley’s closest friends are West Ham supporters; he has joined them at their new ground before and is well attuned to the needle and neurosis that have engulfed much of the club’s past two years. He feels they will come good under Manuel Pellegrini but also thinks his own side have a chance to further complicate West Ham’s poor start to the campaign. “If you’d asked me what I wanted going into the draw, then I’d have said: ‘A London derby at home under the floodlights and get it on the telly,’” he says. Ardley enjoyed the rare luxury of a small transfer fee kitty in the summer – using some of it to bring in James Hanson, the towering striker who helped Bradford City reach this competition’s final so memorably in 2012-13 – and, although his outlay of roughly £100,000 is around 1,000 times less than Pellegrini’s pre-season spend, there is optimism that West Ham will be given a game. AFC Wimbledon have merited a better return than five points from five league matches; they lost narrowly at home to Sunderland on Saturday and Ardley says he cannot fault “the energy, the attacking intent, the chances created” in their early performances. More of the same would surely mean that, as has happened after both their defeats at Kingsmeadow this month, Ardley and his side are applauded off. The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email. The chances are that, whenever this fixture is next played, AFC Wimbledon will finally be based at New Plough Lane. At current rate the move is mooted for early 2020; West Ham provide a lesson, albeit on a different scale, for any club fearing teething problems on upping sticks but Ardley says the preparations have been rigorous. “I think Erik [Samuelson, the chief executive] and co have done a lot of homework on that – in terms of their design, the problems they’ve faced and the transitional periods,” he says. “Because we’re a fan-owned club our supporters have a really strong voice and they get listened to on ticket prices and things that are or aren’t working on a matchday. So I think we’ll be OK.” It counts in their favour that, in direct contrast to West Ham, they will be returning to their spiritual home. The pranks and the pratfalls will take place, in their heavily diluted forms, back where it all began. Ardley says that two years ago he sat his players down to have “a really good chat about discrimination and the language they used … just to make sure we felt relaxed in each other’s environment”. Seemingly it had the desired effect. Toppling Premier League opponents before August is out would surely be the definition of good, clean fun.<doc-sep>West Ham United diced with a potentially embarrassing League Cup second round defeat by 10-man AFC Wimbledon on Tuesday before fighting back to win 3-1 against their third-tier opponents. However, Premier League Cardiff City were dumped out 3-1 by second-tier Norwich City, while Southampton won 1-0 in an all-top-tier tie at South-Coast rivals Brighton & Hove Albion. West Ham had lost their first three Premier League games to sit bottom of the table and their dismal start to the campaign had already sparked speculation among pundits as to whether new manager Manuel Pellegrini would see out the season. Things took a turn for the worse for the East London club when Joe Pigott put Wimbledon ahead with a powerful header after two minutes and the sending off of the hosts’ Rod McDonald after 18 minutes did not immediately improve the visitors’ fortunes. West Ham’s Javier Hernandez celebrates their third goal (Getty Images) While West Ham pressed for an equaliser they had to wait until the 63rd minute for centre back Issa Diop to drive in a leveller before Angelo Ogbonna tapped in to deflate home hopes and Javier Hernandez rounded off the scoring in stoppage time. There was no fightback for Cardiff who rested players at home to Norwich and paid a heavy price. Dennis Srbeny scored twice to put the visitors 2-0 ahead and Maximillian Aarons added to their lead before Bruno Manga scored a late consolation goal for Cardiff. Charlie Austin grabbed the winner for Southampton after 88 minutes at Brighton, while Leicester City thumped third-tier Fleetwood Town 4-0 with Christian Fuchs and Rachid Ghezzal scoring stunning goals for the hosts. Vicente Iborra and Kelechi Iheanacho were also on the scoresheet for the Foxes. Southampton celebrate Charlie Austin’s goal against Brighton (Getty) Stoke City’s Saido Berahino scored his first club goal in 913 days as the second-tier side beat Premier League Huddersfield Town 2-0, while top flight Crystal Palace won 1-0 at Swansea City with a close-range finish by Alexander Sorloth. Bournemouth maintained their unbeaten start to the season with a 3-0 win over League Two MK Dons while Aboubakar Kamara scored twice as Fulham beat fourth tier Exeter City 2-0. The four remaining ties will be played on Wednesday. Reuters<doc-sep>
AFC Wimbledon manager Neal Ardley says his side can be confident of causing an upset in Tuesday's Carabao Cup tie at home to West Ham. The Dons began life in the ninth tier of English football 16 years ago, a fortnight after a West Ham team featuring Paolo Di Canio, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe had finished seventh in the Premier League. After six promotions in 13 seasons, Wimbledon host West Ham as a League One team, and despite not winning in their last four games, Ardley believes his side can give West Ham a stern test. "I think the key [for us] is to say it's a free hit in many ways," the Dons boss told Sky Sports News. Live Carabao Cup "No one expects us to win but within the camp we feel we can. It's a free hit. The pressure will be on them and not us in our eyes. "It's a cup game under floodlights with the TV cameras there. I think it's a great, exciting game - if you can't get excited for it then you shouldn't be in football. "I think we know if West Ham are really, really at it, and on song, it's going to be awfully difficult for us to get a result. Image: West Ham took an early lead at Arsenal but slumped to their third straight loss "What we need to do is just worry about ourselves and say 'we know how we want to play, we know the tempo we want to play at'. And if we bring that, then we ask questions of them and we ask them to be at their best to get a result." Ardley added: "I think they have got a big enough squad to make some changes but still be exceptionally good. I think they will do really well this season - I know it hasn't started as they wanted it to but they have played away at Liverpool and away at Arsenal and that is not easy. "I think they'll get better, and they have got a world-class manager."