West Ham manager Slaven Bilic has blamed the club’s recent injury crisis on the pitches at their training ground, and said that as of next week, the Hammers will be training elsewhere.
West Ham lost defender Winston Reid to a hamstring injury after he slipped during training and it appears that was the last straw in terms of the Croatian making his mind up about the pitches at Chadwell Heath.
At West Ham’s press conference ahead of the weekend’s clash with Stoke City, Bilic was asked if he has a theory why his club are suffering so many muscle injuries, and he was quick to point out that the club’s training facilities were not, in his opinion, up to scratch.
He said:
It’s the million dollar question! On the one hand, you see it happening at many Premier League clubs, but to be fair, I don’t care about other clubs in that sense. There have been a lot of things said since I came here about the pitches that we have here at Chadwell Heath, and they’re not ideal. If you saw Reidy’s injury, he slipped because our pitches are very soft on the surface, but underneath they are very, very hard, so that’s the worst combination. Not only this year but throughout the years we have a history in that and the players are moaning as they are not happy about the quality of the pitches.
The club had plans to train at a new facility, Rush Green, next season, but Bilic confirmed that those plans have now been brought forward and that the players will train there as of next week.
I’ve decided that we are a club in transition regarding our training facilities and we are planning to move next season to Rush Green, but because of the quality of the pitches we’re going to go there earlier. I’ve decided, from Monday, we are going to move to Rush Green and start to train there because we can’t continue to miss this many players with these kind of pitches, which are not in good shape. The plan was to go next year, but because of the situation, we’re going to do it now. I don’t see any other reason because we have a good medical team and good players and the sessions are good, and I told you that since I came here it was an issue – last year, two years ago or five years ago. It has nothing to do with the groundsmen or the medical staff – it’s just the way the ground is here.
