Given the events of an odd 24 hours inside West Ham I wouldn’t be surprised if Michail Antonio turned up on the bench tonight (Fri).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really not expecting it but such is the secrecy and near paranoia regarding team information escaping from the inside the club these days, nothing comes as a shock anymore.

Take yesterday, even after our Arthur had decided to let it be known he was in hospital having had a knee op, and posted a picture on his Instagram,  it was entirely impossible to get any confirmation as we faced a news shutdown from the Hammers media office.

Instead the announcement from the players was quickly taken down – we can imagine who was responsible for that.

We were given all sorts of explanations when inquiring of the media office which even included being told the opposition must not be alerted despite the fact that our friends over at www.kumb.com had been eagle eyed in reporting the news first.

Dealing with media officers is a bit like trying to gain information from MI5 at times – by and large they are there to put out fires and deter you from getting to the bottom of even the most obvious scenarios.

But when the news is already out there and there’s a refusal to confirm it you begin to wonder why . It feels a bit paranoiac.

So given all that and that Mr Moyes decided to tell us at the presser that Michail Antoino will probably not make it you keep a thin hope and options open.

As I said at the start I’m not expecting to see the big fella but given any sort of run out but this secrecy things seems to be getting a tad extreme.

So options open until an hour before the kick off eh?