Bad news for Mikey Antonio

There was bad news for Mikey Antonio out of West Ham last night.

The No 9 has been recovering from a knee injury he picked up on international duty and could even be ready as early as the weekend for the match against Fulham. However, that is nowhere near a given according to backroom insiders at the club. And we have been told this morning that even should he ready there are no guarantees whatsoever that he will get his place back.

Not only is that bad news for him but the rest of us of course as it demonstrates the problems the club continues to have up front and the issues we faced following the injury to Jarrod Bowen when the choices were limited to Divin Mubama and Danny Ings in the Europa League game where we performed poorly despite winning.

It has become clear that the manager may now see as very much third or fourth choice even when fit and that was confirmed by our source this morning when we inquired abut the 33 year old’s fitness. We were told pretty emphatically: “Antonio is not very far away but I can’t see the manager using him anyway.”

Given the club signed the player to a new contract given the problems up top that really kind of says it all. It seems that until we can bring a natural No 9 into the club Jarrod is going to remain in the job.