David Moyes will wait for injury reports before naming his team

The fact that Michail Antonio came on as a second-half substitute at Goodison Park on Wednesday night sums up how different players respond to injuries at this level.

It was less than 48 hours before the game that David Moyes announced that neither Chicharito, James Collins nor Michail Antonio would play against Everton; but the latter came into the squad at a late stage and returned to the team by replacing Marco Arnautović.

Michail playing half an hour or so was a bonus for West Ham; and the indications are that he will be available for the Manchester City game. It just goes to show how the injury situation can vary on a day to day basis.

The likelihood now is that Michail will be in David Moyes’ starting line-up against Pep’s team on Sunday; and if so then perhaps he will be able to influence how the match actually goes.

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Winston Reid and James Collins are definitely out of this one; while Andy Carroll remains a doubt until the day of the match.

Andy is reported to have suffered a knee injury in training; and this led to his late omission from the squad for the Everton game.

Indications towards the latter end of week were that he would be ready to face City; but as always, the medical team will feel it safer to adopt a more cautious approach.

Whether Andy plays against City or not will probably end up as a late decision.

Chicharito is highly unlikely to be involved as David Moyes is keen not to take any chances with his recovery and is thus reluctant to risk the little Mexican striker at the moment.

James Collins was unable to continue for more than twenty minutes or so in midweek against Wycombe Wanderers in the game that was intended to assess his fitness.

Having originally been out with an ankle injury, James irritated a hamstring muscle in training and aggravated this at Adams park. It is unclear exactly how much of a reaction James suffered but it’s a common-enough problem when somebody has been out for a considerable length of time.

It will be for this reason that David won’t want to take any chances over Chicharito so it’s only natural that he’ll want to make sure that all is as it should be first.

Winston Reid’s injury has also been reported as a hamstring muscle strain; so he’s likely looking at an enforced break of at least three to four weeks if he’s hoping to return to the team fully fit; but that’s all dependent on the exact severity of the injury.

Muscular strains of this nature can be difficult to assess accurately during the first few days so quite often it makes more sense to delay a full diagnosis until the injury has had time to properly settle.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that it will be the early part of next week before any reasonable prognosis is able to made with regards to the severity and nature of Winston’s injury together with a likely date for his return.

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For Hammers fans, therefore, it might appear as though little has changed; despite the club dispensing with the services of Slaven Bilić.

Players are still injured, games are still being lost and everyone outside of the club seems to have a lot to say about why things are going wrong.

But all of these are the things that happen in football. Injuries cannot be legislated for; and the prevention of injuries - on which so much emphasis is regularly placed - is only theoretically possible up to a point.

That point tends to be where the avoidable risk of injury stops and the unavoidable begins.

David Moyes has been around long enough to know that there’s no quick-fix in football and by the same token so too does Gary Lewin on the medical side of the club.

The injury situation will get better, given time; and if time can be given to David then hopefully so too will the football.