Towards the end of West Ham’s defeat at the hands of Brentford, it seemed that the Hammers were playing with only nine fit players on the pitch. Having used all five substitutes, Nuno Espírito Santo could only look on, helpless to make further changes as Konstantinos Mavropanos crawled off the playing area and then Crysencio Summerville hobbled around clutching his leg in what looked potentially to be an alarming injury recurrence.

In addition of course Tomas Soucek had been patched up after another clash in which he was sandwiched between his own goal keeper and an opponent: Blood gushed form a head wound around his eyebrow and once again, the Czech spilt blood in what turned out to be a losing cause.

Nuno’s press conference confirmed, somewhat surprisingly in view of the short turnaround ahead of the Elland Road journey on Friday, that Summerville and Soucek will be available, when asked about team news from the Leeds game:

[Only] “Dinos [Mavropanos] is injured. He came off and he now has a scan to see the injury he has. I don’t know exactly how long he’ll be out, but he’ll be missing on Friday.”

Which, after Summerville’s major hamstring surgery...