David Moyes rules out four West Ham United players for Europa Conference League clash vs FCSB
West Ham will be without four first-team players for the UEFA Europa Conference League clash against FCSB on Thursday, according to David Moyes.
The Hammers will look to build up momentum with a win in Europe after a poor start to the Premier League season, where they’ve won just one of their opening six games.
But they’ll have to do it without four regulars as Moyes confirmed three won’t be available and one is a question mark, as quoted by Football.London [7 September].
“Craig Dawson started back training and you probably saw him today,” he said.” He’s back out, he’s not been out training long, he’s still sort of finding his way back in but he’s getting back in amongst it now.
“Ben Johnson is not training yet. He’s still out. Aaron Cresswell is not training yet either so he’s not available.
“Tomas Soucek had picked up a foot injury from the game at Chelsea. So Tomas could be a question mark for me. So that’s what I’ve got at the moment.”
Worry
West Ham have had so many defensive injury problems already this season that it seems crazy we’re not even ten games into the season.
Moyes was likely to rotate the side anyway due to the heavy schedule in place this season and West Ham are considerably stronger than all their opponents in their group in this competition.
However he is now being forced to play first-choice players where he wouldn’t necessarily want to because of injuries and that could lead to them picking up more problems with so many games in such quick succession.
The boss will be hoping the injuries aren’t too serious so that others can step in for them quickly if needed, but as it stands he will have to manage their minutes well from the bench and look to kill games early if he can.
This is one of those games without doubt, and the team he will field should be more than capable of doing the job.