Manuel Pellegrini heads for Wales tomorrow believing the Hammers are in one of the “best moments” of the season.

Should the Hammers beat Cardiff, they will equal their best run of the season when they saw off the Welshmen, Crystal Palace and Fulham scoring eight goals along the way. After being beaten by Watford we went on to beat Southampton and Burnley.

Pellegrini told www.whufc.com : “We are in a good moment of the season because we are a team that is playing well and in this case we now also have a bench which can make a difference, starting with Fabian Balbuena, and we have also recovered Samir Nasri, so we have important players on the bench and we will see which of them will return to the starting XI.

“We had a lot of important players with long injuries throughout the season and I think that was one of the merits of this team, to try to be involved when it had so many players for whom it was impossible to play.

“For me, as a manager, it is easier to have big names on the bench to sit behind you than to not have solutions, so this is the moment of the season when we should demonstrate the strong squad that we have.”

 The manager hailed the form of centre-backs Issa Diop and Angelo Ogbonna

With Balbuena’s return to the squad, Pellegrini faces a selection dilemma and he said: “I said that some players, six or seven players, were playing all the games and of course you can say that, at 30, it is different for Angelo than it is for Diop, who is 21.

“You see Angelo’s performances have been very good and he is in a very good moment. We have recovered Fabian and we will see what happens in the next game.