West Ham United: David Moyes should axe Kurt Zouma v Freiburg, he needs saving from himself
Kurt Zouma needs saving from himself ahead of the West Ham game against Freiburg.
The Hammers captain has a long history of injuries and it’s pretty clear he can’t handle the increased game time when the matches start to come thick and fast.
That is exactly how it’s going to be for the Irons over the next couple of weeks at least as David Moyes aims to strike the balance with some of his star players.
While Zouma has started in all nine of our recent games, the fixture list hasn’t exactly been too demanding, providing him with the opportunity to rest his troublesome knees for a few days before taking to the field again.
Although there is no doubt that not having the captain out there in what is a massive game would be a blow, we have to think about what’s potentially to come beyond this week.
The French international hasn’t actually played a single minute in the Europa League this season, with Angelo Ogbonna featuring alongside Konstantinos Mavropanos for most of the group stages.
The pair did reasonably well together throughout those games as we navigated our way through as group winners in pretty comfortable fashion, including beating Freiburg on two occasions.
Moyes revealed that there is a question mark over the fitness of Nayef Aguerd heading into the clash against the Bundesliga side on Thursday (7 March), meaning Ogbonna is probably the only candidate available to replace Zouma.
I actually would trust the Italian centre-back to do a better job than his Moroccan teammate at this moment in time after he’s made a number of errors so far this season.
There is an argument that Zouma could play against Freiburg and then sit out the game against Burnley on Sunday (10 March), but either way, Moyes must manage his minutes to ensure he doesn’t pick up another injury.
The past couple of matches, securing back-to-back victories over Brentford and Everton, have shown what we’re capable of when the squad is near full fitness.
I’m not saying Zouma shouldn’t feature in Europe at all this season, I just believe that we must protect the centre-back from himself if we want to still have him available in the final couple of months of the campaign.
We should still have more than enough quality at our disposal to pick up a positive result against Freiburg without him.
After all, we’ve done that twice before this season and we can almost certainly do it again.
In other West Ham news, sources have claimed a Premier League manager is now in the frame to replace Moyes.
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