Sam Allardyce has revealed the squad has done very few training sessions due to the heavy fixture schedule over recent weeks.
The manager said: “We have been altering our training for weeks. The basis of that is we haven’t been doing much training, so when you come in and plan a session it is tough.
“The coaches will say to me ‘we should do this session’ and I will say no we can’t do that, we can’t do this, there’s too much contact.
“We have to cotton wool the sessions, it has to be little or no contact. If you put a training session on you have to be careful, if we got another one injured we would have been in big trouble. You are then playing three or four or even five players out of place, filling holes.
“The number of games also changes your training. Train, travel recover, you want to try and get out of that and get into routines.”
The Hammers welcome back Matt Jarvis, Winston Reid and James Collins at White Hart Lane on Saturday, but remain without Andy Carroll, Diego Poyet and Morgan Amalfitano.