West Ham United will have to do without Declan Rice and Aaron Cresswell for Thursday’s UEFA Europa Conference League play-off round first leg against Viborg FF.
The duo are both banned following incidents in the Europa League semi-final at Eintracht Frankfurt last season, so the Hammers will have to shuffle their pack for the visit of the Danes.
With a place in the group stages of European competition for the second successive season on the line, first team coach Billy McKinlay is determined for his side to make sure they take their chance.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference – with boss David Moyes also suspended – he said: “It’s a big blow missing Dec due to suspension. His level of play speaks for itself so it’s disappointing and it’s something we’ll have to overcome.
“We have a number of replacements who can come in and do a good job – the likes of Manuel Lanzini, Tomáš Souček, Flynn Downes and Conor Coventry – so hopefully it won’t impact us too much.”
Elsewhere on the pitch, Craig Dawson is again likely to miss out with a quad issue, but summer arrivals Gianluca Scamacca and Maxwel Cornet will be hoping for their first starts.
“Certainly with Gianluca and Max they haven’t played a lot of football so we have to be aware of that,” McKinlay continued
“And I don’t think throwing them into Manchester City or Nottingham Forest, with the hype of that game, was particularly the right thing to do for a number of reasons.
“Certainly with Gianluca coming to a new country, so there are reasons why [they didn’t start] but they are in contention and you’ll have to watch this space.
“Craig has a problem with his quad, he’s missed a few weeks so he’s a short-term [injury] and hopefully won’t be too long.”
The team’s latest addition, Germany defender Thilo Kehrer is also eligible for selection after arriving on Wednesday and McKinlay remained coy on his possible involvement.
“We’ll see how he settles in and see how he’s feeling,” McKinlay continued. “We’ll get a bit of feedback from him to see how he’s feeling physically. Again that’ll be a decision made over the next 24 hours.
“He did a bit of training with us this morning so we’ll see how he reacts to that.”
