Michail rejoins the squad tomorrow (Mon)
Manuel Pellegrini has told his squad that week of intense work awaits them after what he described as “a useful game” against Winterthur this afternoon (Sun).
But he added: ““I hope that, next week, or before we finish July, the fans of West Ham will have good news. We are trying to build a strong squad and to find the players that we need. Probably we are going to see new faces soon.”
He added: “To finish the week playing against a team with a good technical level was very useful for us.”
“First of all, I think we came to a very good place, a nice place where the players are comfortable and we have all the facilities to work hard. So, when the players are in a good mood, it is very easy to work well. After that, we had a programme that all of them did exactly in the way we asked them to do it.
“On Monday, we start again working three times in the day and we will prepare the team to arrive in the best shape that they be on 11 August.
“At the moment we are just preparing the squad and trying to give a similar amount of minutes, especially in this first week. Then, in the next game we will probably play with one team for around 60 minutes and the first week of August is where we pretend to have the team with all the players we need for next season in their best positions.”
Michail Antonio and the returning Marko Arnautovic will come into the to the training group tomorrow (Mon) but Aaron Cresswell was unavailable for Sunday’s game after suffering a minor groin injury.
The manager said: “Cresswell has a small muscle injury, but we didn’t want to take the risk, so that was why he didn’t play.
“Antonio worked a complete week with the physiotherapist and warmed-up with the squad and from Monday he will start working normally.
“It is a little too soon for Winston Reid to come back [from his knee injury], but he is working hard and we hope he will be ready at the end of July.”