Since preseason started West Ham’s belatedly reshaped first team squad has had a pretty full – on two months. Eleven competitive fixtures since August 8th with, it has to be said, just the one loss- is a fairly heavy work load.
At one stage five games in fifteen days took its toll one a couple of sets of tired legs with Joel Veltman, Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe missing games through injury.
West Ham already have one new squad member on the sick list after eleven competitive fixtures: Joel Veltman missed out against Millwall
The players now have the rare luxury of three weeks with no football to recover and work on the training ground to prepare for the next tranche of games that will be similarly intense, the Queens Park Rangers fixture on October 9th heralding a run of eighteen games in three months, pretty much unbroken.
So, unsurprisingly, according to our source, Nuno has decided to allow his squad to decompress:
“West Ham’s players have been given some much needed time off”
Hardly a surprise in view of the schedule that has gone before and that which is yet to come: 400mile round trips await with journeys to Blackburn, Cardiff and Swansea all up and coming in the next tranche of games – that will certainly test fan stamina, if not that of the players themselves.
On the positive side both Tomas Soucek and hopefully (!)Alphonse Areola will be back at full fitness when the Championship gets going again next month. Midfielder Soucek would certainly have been a useful asset against the Lions on Saturday.