Several of West Ham’s more truculent stars were shipped out this summer as the Irons underwent a spot of ‘want-away spring cleaning’. The training pitch must be a happier place to be now as the unsettling elements – Jean Clair Todibo, Aaron Wan Bissaka and Niclas Fullkrug amongst them – have all departed for new clubs.
Issues over Soungoutou Magassa and Edson Alvarez remain. Whilst Magassa has publicly apologised and seeks to re-integrate himself within Nuno’s squad, the bizarre allegations around Alvarez’ troubles back in Mexico hardly put him in a favourable mindset in which to take on first team football at present – but there are suggestions that the midfielder may yet be used by Nuno in the near future.
Which leaves one lingering unexplained absence from Nuno’s match day squad: The hugely costly Alphonse Areola hasn’t been seen even on the substitutes bench since the Charlton match and wasn’t selected for the Carabao Cup fixture against Southampton with third choice Herrick again starting in his place.
Areola: Not been seen in the match day squad since 22 August – that’s quite a dead leg!
Replacement by Finlay Herrick as West Ham’s keeper on the bench again against Bolton on Monday further fuelled speculation of a falling out. Areola’s wife, you’ll recall, took to social media at the end of last season to voice frustration that the stopper couldn’t get back into Nuno’s starting lineup and consequently got dropped from the France national side ahead of the World Cup just gone. Which suggested all was not good between the pair long before the start of this Championship campaign. Is there, perhaps, another want-away in the making?
This has been dispelled by the West Ham manager who claimed the 33 year-old has been struggling through injury rather than through being a persona non grata in his team selections:
“With Areola it was a dead leg, but he is improving and we are continuing to assess him day by day” (standard.co.uk)
Which might explain the highest paid keeper in the Championship being absent for a week, but – almost a month?
Keeping an eye on the bench ahead of the international break will reveal whether the Frenchman’s “dead leg” has improved enough to see him back into the match day squad or whether it is merely a pretext for another Nuno-style falling out which West Ham can ill afford. No disrespect to young Fin Herrick.
To be honest we should give Herrick more game time he has the potential to be great for us, he is slightly crazy in the way we all love and also brilliant with distribution and he is different to Hermanson. Areola’s contract won’t be renewed so better to get 1 or 2 million for him in January and sell him on.
We have a brilliant crop of academy kids that can perform now at Championship level it’s the opportunity of a lifetime to give them experience if we can find a cantona type player in attacking midfield to bring the experience and confidence to them to play without fear who knows what we could achieve?
We don’t need Sully in charge with “fans” like this constantly spewing negativity based on absolutely f all.
Great work guys 👎
Don’t blame him for falling out with Nuno, he’s a far better keeper than that card board cut out we’ve got in there now he is shocking