Dimitri Payet hasn’t featured for West Ham since the opening day of the season, and West Ham fans have been clamouring on social media to find out the answer.
He’s been training, Slaven Bilic has said he’s been in contention to play of late, but still he hasn’t featured – why?
Well, L’Equipe (h/t Sport Witness) understand that Payet had already joined up with the French national squad in Paris by Sunday afternoon when West Ham were taking on Manchester City at the Etihad.
Bilic told reporters after the Chelsea game that Payet suffered a knock after coming off the bench for a second-half cameo in the 2-1 defeat.
That’s now been revealed to have been a small discomfort at the top of his thigh. Having seen the Andre Ayew go down with a thigh injury and be sidelined for up to four months, Payet doesn’t want to suffer the same fate and hopes the small issue doesn’t turn into something bigger and has therefore not been involved at presumably his own request.
Since picking up the injury, Payet has only trained twice with the first-team squad, last Friday and Saturday before the Manchester City game. Probably never really in contention to play, Payet was probably testing himself out to see whether he was fit enough to feature for France during the international break.
France have a friendly with Italy on September 1st (Thursday) before they travel to Belarus for their first 2018 World Cup qualifier. Whether Payet features on Thursday is up in the air, but another weeks worth of training could put him in good stead to feature in the WCQ.
Rest assured, Payet won’t be leaving East London by Wednesday’s transfer deadline, and expect him to be back in action in some capacity for the visit of Watford in a fortnight’s time.
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