Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo has confirmed Fernando Marcal has a calf injury and does not expect him to play against the Irons on Sunday.
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The 31-year-old Brazilian left back– snapped up from Olympique Lyonnais earlier this summer – limped off just seven minutes into the 3-1 defeat to Manchester City last Monday.
He has not trained since either, with the Wolves boss revealing “He’s one of the issues that we have.
“I’m not very confident he will be available for this game. He’s not training. He’s on treatment.
“We’ve had a diagnosis and it’s an injury to his calf. Let’s keep on trying to treat him and, hopefully, he can get better and be available.”
Ruben Vinagre came on for Marcal against City and appears the most likely to feature in his absence against the Hammers.
The Hammers of course need all the help they can get against Wolves who are now very much a bogey team since returning to the Premier League.
Apart from the first game where a terrible mistake by Carlos Sanchez handed them a winner after a reasonably decent performance, the Hammers have been outclassed by the midlanders.
So far they have beaten us four times over the last two seasons , we have scored no goals and conceded six whilst frankly delivering some very ordinary performances.
It’s all well and good quoting the law of averages being in our favour cliche but the reality is we are going to have to play quite as well as we did against Arsenal to give ourselves any sort of chance.
They have several serious players, not least among them Adama Traore who destroyed any chances we may have had last season.
So far Wolves have beaten Sheffield United and been beaten by Manchester City but will come to the London Stadium looking to inflict more pain on us although given our performances at the Emirates and against Charlton I’m going for a draw.
Prediction 1-1
Unfortunately for hammers we have more than enough cover for Marcal.