West Ham United manager David Moyes has revealed that wingers Robert Snodgrass and Felipe Anderson have undertaken light training, but will miss Saturday’s away game at Norwich City.
Snodgrass has been unavailable for selection since the Premier League season restart with what Moyes previously revealed to be a disc problem in his back, while Felipe Anderson sustained a hamstring injury in the warm-up against Chelsea last week.
With the Hammers travelling to Carrow Road for their third Premier League fixture in the space of just six days, Moyes said at his pre-match press conference that he was hopeful both could be involved in the remainder of the Hammers’ season in some capacity.
But with the final game of the season against Aston Villa due to take place in just 16 days time, Moyes also warned that the road to recovering full match fitness might outrun the duration of the campaign.
“We’re much the same,” the manager said, with regards to team news.
“We’re still waiting on Robert Snodgrass – he’s done a little bit of light training today, the same as Felipe Anderson. They’re not available for this game but I’m hoping that I might get them back for some of the remaining games after this, possibly.
“It’d be great, but if you look at it realistically, for players to be out over the lockdown period and then miss this period of games, it becomes really difficult for them to get up to speed quickly enough. You never know. If we can get them for small periods, that’ll be great.”
One positive which stemmed from Wednesday’s disappointing loss to Burnley at London Stadium was the return of record signing Sebastien Haller off the substitutes’ bench.
The Frenchman made his first appearance since the season restart against the Clarets, coming off the bench with just under half-an-hour to play and almost making an immediate impact, only to be denied by Burnley goalkeeper Nick Pope.
Without many competitive minutes under Haller’s belt, however, Moyes spoke cautiously but optimistically about the Frenchman – and the prospect of him partnering in-form forward Michail Antonio up front.
“We can’t really judge his [Haller’s] form at the moment because he’s played 20 or 30 minutes, so we’ve got nothing really to go on,” Moyes reasoned. “We’re obviously just bringing him back from injury.
“He’s an important player for us to get back. Is he fully fit? I would say ‘no’ at the moment, but I think he’s capable of helping us out and hopefully he will regain his match fitness quite quickly.
“They [Haller and Antonio] have worked very well together before, but unfortunately since lockdown we’ve not had Haller for them to work and play together, so we’ve not had the chance to really use that combination.
"As I said, we’re still trying to get Seb up to match speed at the moment.”
