Five West Ham first-team players could miss pre-season training
As many as five first-team West Ham players could miss the Hammers’ pre-season training due to their international commitments.
According to Claret and Hugh, Lukasz Fabianksi, Andriy Yarmolenko, Tomas Soucek, Vladimir Coufal and Declan Rice have all competed in the latter stages of Euro 2020, so will be entitled to three weeks leave.
That would mean that they could miss most, if not all, of the pre-season training and return in time to play the Betway cup which will be held in the first week of August.
Rice, who isn’t expected to return before August 1 as he is still on international duty and is expected to start for England against Italy in the final of the EUROs.
Pablo Fornals and Said Benrahma missed the first pre-season friendly against Dundee as they’ve not joined the training party, but are expected to in the coming days and will be in contention for the remainder of the games after their return.
Youngsters can impress
Defender Jamal Baptiste didn’t start in Scotland, but came on in the second half to find the back of the net. Despite being only 17, he’s already showing the maturity of a first-team regular and would be one worth keeping an eye on in the coming games.
Nathan Holland was another player who impressed. He started the game from kick-off and despite having a slow start to proceedings, he improved as the game wore on and proved to be a constant thorn in Dundee’s side.
Another player who started the game was Frederick Alves. The 21-year-old centre-back was tidy in possession, helped limit the attacks to goal and should be in the first-team picture for next season should we not sign another defender.
Conor Coventry, Aji Alese and Nathan Trott were also given minutes by David Moyes and while they were not overly impressive, these are still early days of pre-season and we’re expecting them to do better in the coming games.
We’re looking forward to our next game on the 13th against Northampton Town.
In other West Ham news, WHZ View: Hammers could sign next Rice, scouted player reportedly available at cut-price
Be sure to follow West Ham Zone on Facebook and Twitter for 24/7 updates on the Hammers and more exclusive interviews with Frank McAvennie.