Paolo Di Canio and Fredi Kanoute both miss the trip to Liverpool at the weekend, leaving teenager Jermain Defoe as 'senior' striker with former Red Titi Camara as back-up.
Whether Trevor Sinclair is moved to a forward's role at the weekend, allowing Eduoard Cisse to step into the midfield, remains to be seen - but the fact is, as Glenn Roeder is all too aware, his attacking options are limited just now.
All of which makes Don even more determined to get fit as soon as possible in order to prove that is where his future at the club is best served.
"I think my best position is up front anyway," he says. "I play there for Scotland and played there for Everton and Sunderland as well.
"I don't consider myself as a right winger. I would rather play through the middle - and up front is where I am happiest.
"But I am not going to start picking and choosing. It is up to me to get myself fit and prove to the gaffer that my knee is fine before anything else."
Don played half a reserve game in his comeback a couple of weeks ago followed by a 30 minute appearance in a reserve friendly against QPR - a performance cut short by a collision.
He came off as a precautionary measure and says: "I haven't trained for a week now but I am just letting the knee calm down a bit because I got that knock in the reserves. It was a slight knock off the left back, and the knee started swelling up, so I came off.
"I honestly haven't got a clue when I will start playing again; I will just have to see how it goes next week.
"But when I first did my knee it was always going to be around Christmas time when I came back - so I am still well on target."
Nonetheless, Don would have loved to have played his former club Liverpool, from whom Harry Redknapp originally signed him in a then-record deal back in August 1994, and he admits: "I would have loved to have made Anfield my first game back - it is a great place to play - but unfortunately I will have to miss that one."
"I won't even be able to watch as I have got to stay in London and do a bit of work on my knee."
But Don sees no reason why the Hammers can't get a result and adds: "The results away from home haven't been too bad and the lads have been playing really well.
"We are just lacking a bit of form at home and we just need that one win to get us up and running.
"It depends what form our boys are in and if they play as they have been away there is no reason why we can't go to Anfield and get a result - it just depends which side turns up, really.
"Sometimes you have great home form and can't win away, which was what happened last season, but this year it is the other way round and it is up to us to turn it round at home."
But he stops short of predicting a fourth away Premiership win on the trot - and a first win at Anfield since the 1963/64 season, when Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst scored the goals in a 2-1 victory.
"It is too hard to say - too tough to call," he says.