David Moyes has confirmed Jarrod Bowen will not be involved for West Ham United in this weekend’s Premier League match against Aston Villa.
Bowen has been absent since sustaining a knock during the Irons’ fixture away to Liverpool last weekend, forcing the forward to miss the Europa League round of 16 first-leg tie away to Sevilla on Thursday.
The manager has now provided an update on the No20’s availability, revealing that Bowen will not be involved at London Stadium on Sunday.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Moyes said: “We’ve got one or two knocks and niggles. Regarding Jarrod, he’s not going to be available for the game at the weekend. We’re hoping he can continue to make some improvement. He’s getting slightly better.
“Of course, we’re going to feel Jarrod’s absence but in truth we’ve only been missing him for one game. He got taken off against Liverpool with his injury so we’ve only really had him out for one game.
“Did we miss him against Sevilla? Yes we did miss him, but I’ve got to say that we didn’t have Declan Rice against Liverpool. Did we miss him? Yes we did but we coped without him and I though we coped without Jarrod in Sevilla.
“We could do with Jarrod’s goals which have been so important to us in the last month or so. I’m hoping we can get him back. It’s a really difficult injury to diagnose completely and that’s probably a bit of the hold up with it. We hope we can get him a bit closer to fitness, but he won’t be available for this weekend’s game.”
Declan Rice had been absent for the match with Liverpool but returned to the starting XI with Sevilla, and Moyes was happy with the midfielder’s efforts upon his return from illness.
The manager also provided a brief update on the squad fitness on the whole following the match in Spain.
He added: “Declan had a really bad virus over the weekend but I thought he did really well for us in his first game back. But it’s something that’s not unexpected, that he plays at that level, because he’s a very good player.
“We’ve only just got ourselves back in and we’re checking how everybody is. So we can’t give a complete answer at this time, but we seemed to come through the Sevilla game relatively okay and mainly unscathed.”
