Injuries Latest

Jermain Defoe serves the final game of a five match suspension at the weekend, Tomas Repka returns from illness, while Adam Nowland is a major doubt with an ankle injury.

"Adam has just turned his ankle a little bit," confirms physio John Green.

Although Steve Lomas played in a behind closed doors friendly in the week, he is still some way away and John says:

"Steve Lomas obviously played the other day in a practice game and had had about four weeks off with a groin problem picked up prior to Christmas.

"That has taken a while to settle and then it has been back to running and getting the ankle mobilisation, which hopefully is settled now, and we have to build up the ankle again - we can't just throw him straight back in there.

"He is chomping at the bit to keep playing but he trained today after a day of rest and he will run on Saturday.

"Hopefully he can look forward to next week and hope we don't get any setbacks.

"You have to consider the amount of time he has been out - from Easter last year until the end of the season he didn't train properly at but with the predicament the team was in he didn't feel it was appropriate not to play.

"Even though the ankle was a problem he had a number of injections in the week prior to each game to settle the ankle down and then he just literally played the games, trying to rest in between.

"It was not an ideal scenario but as so much was at stake he felt it was appropriate as captain to do that so really we haven't trained properly with Steve since just after last Christmas.

"Obviously he had the operation at the end of the season which unfortunately wasn't successful, then had to have the operation revised, re-done, this season and now it is recovering from that.

"The groin problem was just really over-exuberance on all our parts in that he had played 90 minutes on a Tuesday and didn't feel any repercussions from that, trained again on the Thursday and then said after the practice game on the Friday said that the groin was stiff.

"But again, it was only afterwards and hindsight is a wonderful thing and if you haven't got any symptoms to suggest you shouldn't play it is very difficult to pull somebody out.

"At the time it was great and he had done a lot of running and the football work was the stuff he really needed to do."

Rob Lee also played in the friendly midweek, for 45 minutes, and John adds:

"Rob Lee has had a couple of practice games now, he had 45 minutes in the week without a problem, and it will just be a case of him building up the amount of football.

"The knee is going to be sore because he has got some arthritic changes in that knee which he is well aware of and the operation has been done to tidy up the articular surfaces of it.

"It doesn't mean for one minute the knee is going to be right now; it is going to be achey and sore and there is still a bit of fluid on it.

"But obviously we are aware that he is coming to the latter days of his contract now."

As for Don Hutchison, John reveals:

"We are only eight or nine days since he had the lateral meniscus operated on - he had a small tear there which was operated on by Mr. Williams a week ago last Monday.

"We are looking forward to him being back playing football at about six to eight weeks; it is likely, as it is a lateral meniscus, that he will be in some discomfort for about a month after that and we will monitor the swelling.

"But generally speaking lateral meniscal problems take longer to come back than the medial ones do so you are looking at a two to three month period to be fully right."

Neil Mellor is out of the squad at the weekend, and John says:

"Neil has just got a slight calf strain which he tried to train on last week to try and be available for the Wolves game - but it wasn't ready.

"He didn't set himself back, we just backed off him this week because in my opinion even that kind of mild strain is going to take a fortnight to settle down.

"So he will be looking to train in earnest from Monday onwards."

Tomas Repka returns from the illness which ruled him out at Wolves and John says:

"He is a resilient character so you know that if he pulls out of a game he must be pretty washed out.

"David Noble is also suffering from a similar thing this week and has missed a couple of days training, but Tomas is fully fit now and is firing on all cylinders again."

Rufus Brevett and young centre half Elliot Ward are both progressing slowly, and John says:

"Tuesday is a landmark day for Rufus when the plaster comes off and he goes into one of these air cast boots which means we can take it on and off and get at his ankle to do some mobilisation.

"He will spend two weeks in the air cast boot and then he will be back rehabbing as normal.

"We expect him in eight to 10 weeks to be back playing - hopefully by the end of March we will be seeing him joining in practice games.

"Elliot Ward is going very well; all his symptoms have now subsided, but the problem is he has been out a long time and he is a big lad with a big frame.

"He has weight on and his fitness is nowhere near what it would be to justify playing for West Ham so he has got a long way to go on the fitness front.

"But that was always going to be the case and it is not that he has been particularly slower than we expected, it is just that it is a long way back from a back operation like that.

"The most important thing is that he is now able to run and do all the physical activities without any discomfort in his back or in his legs - so the operation was a big success."

Bywater, Shaaban, Mullins, Repka, Melville, Dailly, Harewood, Harley, Carrick, Reo-Coker, Etherington, Connolly, Deane, Quinn, Ferdinand, Horlock, Cohen, Nowland, Lee, Mark Noble.