Three big match fitness questions

Three key West Ham players had questionable match fitness on Saturday at the London Stadium during the opening defeat against Newcastle United.

Declan Rice who suffered from an ankle injury and short illness during his time off looked out of form. He didn’t look match fit when he played for England either and one could argue he should have skipped international duty to concentrate on recovery and his club’s start to the Premier League.

Issa Diop too appeared to lack match fitness sharpness, he has recently suffered from a calf injury and a mystery illness and was for this game. The centre backs were missing for the first Newcastle goal.

Tomas Soucek too was a question mark over the weekend, he was forced to self isolate in the Czech Republic after his massuer was tested positive with Covid  forcing him to miss valuable training days.

But with lack of depth in the squad David Moyes probably felt he had little other choice then to play all three.

This all goes some way to perhaps explain the poor level of performance perhaps.