West Ham United defender Winston Reid will be sidelined for up to six weeks after suffering a hamstring injury in training, as per Jack Sullivan.
Advertisement
The east Londoners’ great start to the campaign has threatened to derail in recent weeks, but they turned in an impressive display to earn a 0-0 draw away at Manchester United on Saturday.
Dimitri Payet, Manuel Lanzini, Diafra Sakho, Victor Moses and Enner Valencia are all out and West Ham are struggling for attacking talent.
Bilic said he expected Lanzini to return in time for the visit of Swansea City on December 20 while Payet and Valencia are also approaching full fitness.
Bilic has urged his squad players to stand up and be counted during their injury crisis and said: “I’m not happy, of course, but I am not trying to be positive – I am positive”.
The meeting pits the team with the highest proportion of attempts from set-pieces this season (West Ham – 35.8%) against the team with the highest proportion of attempts from open play (Stoke – 16.3%).
The Hammers have suffered a number of injuries to key players in the last few weeks, which have resulted in a dip in form and performances. “We need to get over it and do well with the players we do have”. The Hammers face a hard challenge at both ends of the pitch. defensively they have to find a way of stopping City’s playmaker Xherdan Shaqiri linking up with forward Marko Arnautovic who is the Potters top goal scorer with five.
“I’ve decided from Monday we are going to move to Rush Green and start to train there because we can’t continue to miss this many players with these kind of pitches, which are not in good shape”.
Advertisement
The 32-year-old has made just three Premier League appearances this season, and with Sam Allardyce also being a leading factor, a Sunderland switch ultimately made a lot of sense. The season is very long, every team has good luck and bad luck with injuries.
