West Ham manager David Moyes spoke about Issa Diop before our second-leg Europa League clash with Lyon and touched on his lack of options at centre-back.
Angelo Ogbonna is out for the foreseeable future whilst the same can be said for Kurt Zouma.
In other news…Report claims West Ham’s sixth longest serving player could join rivals in the summer
And the worst possible news broke this morning regarding Issa Diop and a suspected Achilles injury.
The 25-year-old is now expected to miss the rest of the season as a result.
The news really couldn’t have come at a worse time with a Europa League semi-final clash against Eintracht Frankfurt on the horizon as well as some vitally important Premier League games.
Moyes will be racking his brains for ways to solve the issues we have at the heart of defence.
It seems as though he has already made his mind up as to what he’ll do during Diop’s absence though…
Moyes has already dropped hint as to how he will combat Issa Diop injury blow for West Ham
The Scot was speaking to reporters last Wednesday in light of Kurt Zouma being ruled out for around a month with an ankle problem.
Moyes outlined how Diop could easily slot in for Zouma but he mentioned Declan Rice as well, as quoted by Football.London:
“Issa’s not really let us down. He’s come into the team on different occasions. There was a period when we relied on him. He’s always been there or thereabouts, so hopefully if he gets that opportunity, he’s able to take it. Declan has played [at centre-back] before and would give us a different dimension. We’ve got that possibility.”
So there you have it.
Moyes didn’t mention the possibility of promoting someone from the under-23s. Nor did he suggest moving Alex Kral back into defence.
It seems as though Moyes will move Dec back into defence. And if that does happen, we believe that the Scot will be making a very big mistake.
Losing what Rice offers us in the middle of the park could be disastrous.
The West Ham boss would be better off bringing in Aji Alese or Jamal Baptiste to replace Issa Diop. He could also dip into the free agent market if he wanted to.
Moyes has already hinted what will happen though. And with Diop now out injured, we could see Rice playing regularly in the back-line over the next five weeks or so.
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