Aaron Cresswell hopes West Ham United have a clean bill of health and are back to near full-strength when Manchester United visit London Stadium on Sunday evening.
Declan Rice, Nayef Aguerd and Tomas Soucek all missed Wednesday’s 3-0 Premier League defeat at Manchester City through an illness that saw the trio sent home from the team hotel to recover just six hours before kick-off at Etihad Stadium.
In their absence, stand-in captain Cresswell and his depleted team gave their all against Pep Guardiola’s side, using a low-block to keep them at bay during an impressive first-half defensive performance.
But Nathan Ake’s 49th-minute header from a set piece broke the Irons’ resistance and further goals from Erling Haaland – his record-breaking 35th in the Premier League this season – and Phil Foden, via a deflection off Emerson, added insult to illness.
However, Cresswell believes Rice, Aguerd and Soucek can rise from their sick beds in time to face the Red Devils in a game where victory could all but secure West Ham’s top-flight safety if results elsewhere also go the Hammers’ way.
We did give a good account of ourselves for 45 minutes and in the first half I thought we really nullified them with the opportunities.
They didn’t really create any chances and the ones they did have in the second half, they took.
It was difficult because we did have certain spells where we could have taken our own opportunities but we didn’t really make the most of them but, look, it was always going to be a difficult night and we fought hard and stuck together.
We’ve got some massive games coming up and we’ve got to put that behind us, take the positives and move on.
The frustrating thing from our part is that they scored from a set piece, which we’re normally good at, but of course we lost a lot of height with the players [who were ill] in Tomas, Dec and Nayef, you could say.
Sometimes the turnover tonight, we lost a lot of balls where, as I said before, we should have made better opportunities with them.
But look, when you play against Man City it’s always going to be tough and we’ve just got to put that behind us now and move on.
Some of the players they’ve got are world-class players and the game plan we had was working.
I thought we were brilliant in the first half [defensively] and on turnovers from them we could have made better opportunities but we didn’t, so we have got to look forward to the next game now.
Flynn Downes has worked hard all season and he was just waiting for that chance.
Obviously with Tomas, Dec and Lucas it’s not easy [to get in the team], but I thought he did well tonight in a difficult game to come into.
We’ve got a big squad and a lot of games coming up, so I’m sure there will be a lot of rotation.
It’s a four-game season now and we’re four points clear of the bottom three, so three or four points or whatever it might take to keep us up, we just want to get it sooner rather than later.
We’ve also got a European semi-final which are going to be two massive games, but obviously every game between now and the end of the season is going to be vital.
Once the lads are back, I’m sure they’ll be back by Sunday and be raring to go, so as I say every game from now is massive.
It’s Man United in the late game on a Sunday night and the crowd will be up for it and we want to get the three points.
