West Ham boss David Moyes told reporters last night how he took Michail Antonio off because the attacker felt a slight tightness in his hamstring, as quoted by Football.London.
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And those words will obviously worry the Hammers fans.
Antonio has a history of injuring his hamstrings.
In fact, the 30-year-old has missed over 300 days of action with that exact injury since the 2016/17 campaign.
The former Nottingham Forest ace has been in fine form recently, with 11 goals in his last 16 Premier League games for West Ham.
Antonio worked his socks off against Tottenham yesterday. But he was replaced in the 77th minute by Andriy Yarmolenko.
And David Moyes told Football.London his reasoning for bringing the Ukrainian on in place of the powerful 30-year-old:
“Michail had a tight hamstring and I didn’t want to take any chances at that time so I changed it.”
Let’s just hope that Antonio’s hamstring fully recovers in time for Saturday’s clash with Manchester City.
With our new system, losing the 30-year-old for a prolonged period of time would be an absolute disaster.
West Ham do have Sebastien Haller waiting in the wings of course. But the Frenchman really isn’t suited to playing the lone striker role.
And that is what makes the Hammers’ failure to sign another established centre-forward in January even more frustrating.
We now just have to keep our fingers crossed that Antonio remains fit for the rest of the season.
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