Injury reports: good news looks likely

An interesting trend which is giving rising hope on the injury news front is developing at West Ham.

Yesterday saw the return of Enner Valencia from an ankle injury he sustained against last month and the early reports were he’d be out until the New Year.

Instead he was back nearly three weeks early and the same could be true of Manu Lanzini. He took a knock in training ahead of the Manchester United game and after being informed he’d be back for yesterday’s game we were later told he could be out for six weeks.

However, that may now have been changed with the manager saying he is likely to be fit for the Swansea game adding that: “Dimitri Payet is making good progress so who knows?”

All of this follows a series of statements and predictions which have often caused much public discussion whilst at times proving inaccurate.

Even when it was well known yesterday ahead of the game that Enner Valencia was certain to be on the bench, David Gold in his ‘From the Boardroom’ column on the official site referred only to “keeping fingers crossed for an early return”.

One source told us: “People are being more careful and the longest return date is now being quoted rather than the shortest or the ‘hoped for.’

“As a result it’s conceivable there could be some pleasantly surprising news emerging, as we have already seen with Enner.”