Sebastien Haller remains a doubt for West Ham’s midweek game against Burnley at the London Stadium but should return for the Norwich City game. Haller was missing again form the matchday squad that travelled to Newcastle but the manager says he continues to train on the grass to regain his fitness with the club publishing two photos of him training at Rush Green to put to bed any conspiracy theories he was been forced to sit out over a payment to Frankfurt.
West Ham owns the registration of Haller and Frankfurt and/or FIFA can do nothing in the short term that would prevent him from playing.
‘He is just injured’ a club insider told Claret and Hugh and “Sunday’s game came too early for him”.
Asked post-match the West Ham manager simply said: “We’re not sure how Seb Haller is, how he will be for midweek.”
The club maintains that there is no funding issue and that there was a legitimate commercially confidential issue, which cannot be disclosed, which resulted in the delay but the payment is being sorted out.
West Ham hasn’t missed Haller in the last two games with goals from Tomas Soucek and Michail Antonio and it begs the question whether Haller walks back into the starting lineup of an unbeaten West Ham team when he is finally fit.
Well we have missed Haller in the form he had just started to find before the lockdown and in the friendlies . We lost 2 and drew one we shold of have won. It means we have to play Antonio every game on his own up front. We also have to play Lanzini and Fornals together which isn’t working. Only one of them can fill that spare role not yet taken up. Bowen,Rice,Soucek and Antonio are shoe ins. Haller should be too. Having him playing could of meant us putting away Newcastle.