Hammers bench could be scarce

The Hammers bench may be low on numbers on Sunday with Frederik Alves, Conor Coventry and Ademipo Odubeko all starting for the Under 23’s tonight at Rush Green alongside Arthur Masuaku and Andriy Yarmolenko.

With Darren Randolph, Ryan Fredericks and Pablo Fornals all likely to remain unavailable for the West Ham London Stadium bench could be a little scarce on Sunday against Arsenal.

The likely Sunday starting line-up will be Fabianksi, Coufal, Diop, Dawson, Cresswell, Soucek, Rice, Bowen, Lingard, Benrhama, Antonio.

And that means the bench almost selects itself with  Nathan Trott, David Martin, Manuel Lanzini, Fabian Balbuena, Mark Noble, Ryan Ferdericks and Ben Johnson which could leave us pretty short.

COVID rules insist that the senior and under 23 remain in separate bubbles so swapping players between squads involves testing and takes time.

Last week David Moyes said it was a tough balance between playing his Academy stars in the U23 games or getting them to sit on the senior bench as unused substitutes.