Moyes confirms Hammers knocks and niggles

David Moyes has issued his usual cautious team news refusing to be too specific about injury and illness problems.

No problem with that – there’s no reason to give anything away although he is clearly encouraged by the Kurt Zouma situation.

He conformed his words of Wednesday night and the CandH report that there were various problems in the squad with players carrying niggly problems.

And although he refuses to ex[plain who has and hasn’t got covid Tomas Soucek is now known to have gone down with the virus although the date he went into isolation is another issue.

It will depend of course on when that happened as to whether or not he is available to play against what is known to be an injury stricken Leeds side.

We expect – as stated earlier – for it to be an unchanged Hammers team from the one that beat Norwich 2-0 on Wednesday evening.

Moyes meanwhile told the pre-match presser: “When you play Sunday-Wednesday-Sunday you’re always liable to pick up more injuries and I think that’s the problem with the regular games.

“We’ve got one or two knocks and niggles around which we’re going to have to assess and see how they are.

“Kurt Zouma is on his way back – he’s just started back training and is doing quite well. He’s another player unfortunately who had been down with the virus, and all the clubs have situations whether it be injuries or people with COVID, but we have to deal with it, move on and do the best we can.

“I don’t want to be specific on who’s got COVID and who’s injured, but we were without Tomás Souček and Mark Noble on Wednesday. We’re hoping we might get one of them back, I’m not saying who.

“We’ve also got some other niggles which we picked up from the game, and players who’ve got COVID as well so we’re trying to work round it like every other club at the moment.”