By Hughie Southon
West Ham’s luck simply gets worse and worse on the injury front with the manager being hit by yet another major blow.
ExWHUEmployee has reported that the only recently returned Kurt Zouma sustained bruising to the thigh in last weekend’s match against Everton and that after a scan it seems he could be out for up to a month.
There remains hope that he could be out for less than month this time with one of our sources claiming however, that the player has torn a muscle above the thigh
Zouma already has an injury history of 58 days this season and 49 last whilst he was out for a total of 466 days before joining the Hammers.
It remains a particularly wicked blow given the series of really important Premier League games coming up.
The injury isn’t connected to his previous knee problem which gives more hope that he will be back quicker than the month
A London Stadium source said: “We are getting no luck whatsoever. He has torn a muscle above the thigh”
Understatement!
Sorry I like Zouma but when we signed him, it was him or Milenkovic of Fiorentina. Zouma had previous, Moyes ignored and signed him against the better signing of Milenkovic. For me injuries to players are a given and you are unfortunate if these are first time injuries all happening at the same time but I have absolutely no sympathy in our case, when you buy players with a history of injuries, that is telling these player’s bodies are prone to injuries so it makes zero sense to buy them. Also Moyes promised young talented players but he continues to buy players that have a lot of mileage in their legs and consequently more prone to injuries. The ultimate blame lays with the manager.
Yes, I agree. Plus West Ham have a history of injuries over the years and you can only put it down to bad training and a lack of the good training facilities other clubs have.
But these injries are happening during games
When injuries happy in games, it is a real indicator that previous injuries and mileage are taking their toll on players bodies . Moyes transfer strategy has also been a hoje, simply he did not buy players to fit the system he wanted to play the red bull model. Everyone knows Scamacca needs a 10 right beside him. Benrahma is the perfect fit but moyes plays him on the wing again prob to facilitate Bowen.. He is utterly clueless. Everyone knows our best midfield 3 is Rixe Fornals and Paqueta but again to facilitate Bowen he only plays Benrahma or Fornals when he should play both. The sacking of Moyes is inevitable I just hope the board do it before it’s too late. I actually like the link to Hasselhoff ex Southampton manager, I like the Croatia manager, I like Bielsa, I like Sarri sovthere loads of good options out there.
We have had a real run of bad luck with injuries. Granted, they are happening in games, and the manager has no control over that.
A couple of things occur to me though:
Firstly, if we want to buy players of high quality to take us to the next level, we probably have to take some with that bit of “mileage” in their legs to stay within our budget. It’s not as if we can offer Champions League, or even regular European football judging by our form this season.
Secondly, we seem to be shedding young talent from our academy and youth teams, noted by Gonzo in an earlier piece.
Seeing that the manager recognised the need to bring down the average age of the first team, he’s going a funny way about it.
It feels like we missed a chance, with our successes of the last two seasons, to take the opportunity to mix experience with youth.
It will take time, or the funds of a oil rich nation, to build and mix it up with the top 5/6 teams, but it does feel like we’re going backwards.
Mostly agree with you, fellow Oz based fan. Eddie Howe has the funds of an oil rich nation, yet Newcastle have so far shown restraint in the market place. However (no pun intended) their team has still performed miracles this season. And it’s down to their young manager. The change for them has been quite remarkable.
Picking up what Hammeroo has commented we had two great seasons with minimum injuries under our older manager!
Newcastle are having a great season just like we did in 2021 with a small largely injury free squad.
It’s just luck, remember Antonio a couple of seasons ago, we were treading on eggshells hoping we could get at least half a season out of him. Look now fully fit for last 2 seasons. All down to our physios etc.