West Ham’s two January signing have between them, transformed how Nuno plays the game and made Hammers football both more effective and considerably more attractive to watch.
The results since Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe were integrated into the side have spoken for themselves.
“Defending from the front‘ – a high energy pressing game with fierce closing down of opponents – has transformed Nuno’s defensively minded set-up into fast paced attractive counter-attacking football that has won acclaim from fans as well as valuable Premier League points.
So it was something of a disaster when the club revealed Pablo was out for the long term with an ‘unspecified’ injury: West Ham’s reluctance to provide details of the problem that had beset the 22 year old Portuguese forward made fans and commentators suspect the worst: A long term knee or ankle injury – or perhaps the Hammers’ forwards curse of hamstring tears?
Club insider provides a welcome update on Pablo’s injury
News this morning came as a welcome boost to morale ahead of the resumption of the Premier League campaign on Saturday – as earlier revealed, Pablo’s injury is unlikely to keep him out of the rest of this season: In fact we’ve obtained an update from our highly placed source on the nature of Pablo’s ‘mystery’ injury:
“NOT the remainder of the season..” (as per C and H earlier) – ..”but muscle problem that will take some time“
Welcome news indeed for those hoping that Nuno will get back to his high energy 4-4-2 formation rather than slipping back into his ultra-cautions 5-3-2 defensive set up that he started with last weekend in the FA cup.
The prospect of Pablo back before the end of the season offers a big morale boost to fans and the club who have seen five wins from eight in all competitions this year: Rather than have to endure their newest attacker massing for months – as was the case this time last year with Crysencio Summerville – supporters can look forward to the energetic young forward getting back into the relegation battle ahead of the season finale in May.
Thanks for persuing this mystery, Martin. And, wherever I had read about Pablo’s injury history, it did say it was a muscle problem. Now we know for sure, sort of!
One thing that I have learned is not to expect any information from Nuno – so people assume the worst – we have no idea whether he will miss 3 6 or 9 games
Unfortunately despite our improved form it will remain squeaky bum time for quite a while
Hopefully we will escape relegation and then have a less stressful season 2026 / 2027
COYI