The weekend vacation is scheduled too soon, even though the midfielder is back in training.
Lucas Paqueta will not be available for West Ham’s trip to Nottingham Forest this weekend.
Paqueta resumed training this week, but he won’t play at the City Ground. David Moyes is hesitant to take a chance on his playmaker following a calf injury that flared up again during the FA Cup match against Bristol City earlier this month.
He’s not well enough to go tomorrow, Moyes said reporters on Friday. He has spent a few days on the grass.
“It’s definitely not full out, but I wouldn’t call it tentative either.”
When Paqueta eventually makes a comeback, Moyes continued, West Ham will need to exercise caution.
“Yes, I think so,” he answered. “I believe that to be the likely sentiment. If we had to take a chance on anything, we would be concerned.
“The second part of the season has a ton of important games that we can target. We’ll be in the running for future tournaments if we can rack up another five or six victories along the way. In addition, we have a European match in approximately a month.
“It will be wonderful to have him back, but there isn’t any risk right now because he’s not ready.”
Since Paqueta’s departure, West Ham’s performance has drastically declined; the Hammers have lost their last five Premier League games. In that time, Moyes has only seen his team score once from open play, which also happened to fall during the period that star forward Mohammed Kudus was traveling with Ghana for the Africa Cup of Nations.
“We’ve missed Lucas a lot because, mostly prior to the Africa Cup of Nations, we had an idea of how good we were playing,” Moyes continued. Around that time, Kudus was out for four games, Jarrod Bowen returned due to an injury, and Michail Antonio also suffered an injury. However, Manchester United has struggled this season, while Newcastle has had serious injury issues.
“We’ve been having some issues lately, not just with injuries but also with players missing time.”
Better news: Michail Antonio is back in the running after missing out on action due to a knee injury sustained while serving with Jamaica on international duty in November, and Kurt Zouma and Edson Alvarez are also available after being substituted at halftime against Arsenal.
“Micky is back in action,” Moyes went on. “He’s returned to the squad after about a week of training, but we’ll need to see exactly how he is.”
