The latest injury news with Head of Medical and Sports Science Stijn Vandenbroucke - in association with Spire Roding Hospital...
Hello everyone,
We are in the final few days of preparations for the new Premier League season at our new Training Ground at Rush Green, and all of the players and staff are looking forward to an exciting trip to Chelsea on Monday evening.
I would like to start by welcoming Andre Ayew and Arthur Masuaku to West Ham United. Both are fit and ready to go.
They have been training with their previous clubs and joined us with similar levels of fitness as the rest of the squad which is good, but new players are always a little bit more at risk.
This week we have encouraging news regarding Manuel Lanzini, Aaron Cresswell and Gokhan Tore.
Manuel injured his knee while on Olympic Games duty with Argentina. He was wearing a knee brace for four weeks. Manuel is out of the brace and has entered a new phase in his rehab and started running on Wednesday.
Aaron injured his knee in the pre-season match with Karlsruher in Austria. He did not require an operation and is making very good progress. Aaron has been wearing a brace and using crutches for a few weeks.
He has now started walking with the brace, partially weight bearing. On Sunday we will take the brace off and progress to the next steps in his rehabilitation process.
Gokhan got injured in the final training session in Slovenia before our UEFA Europa League first leg with Domzale.
He had a significant trauma to his knee and rehabbed very well with our medical team and rehab fitness coach Eamon Swift, finishing those sessions on Wednesday. He will resume training with the squad today.
Diafra Sakho is undertaking an individual training programme and is working hard to attain the right level of fitness to join the squad as soon as he can.
Finally, Cheikhou Kouyate, Pedro Obiang and Darren Randolph picked up minor knocks in the Domzale home leg and we didn’t want to take any chances, so they were not involved in the Juventus game. They all trained without any problems on Wednesday and are fit for selection against Chelsea.
Enjoy the weekend and the start of the new Premier League season!
Stijn Vandenbroucke
Head of Medical and Sports Science