Manuel Lanzini has put an end to recent media speculation by signing a new 5 year deal with West Ham United, the new deal on improved terms is believed to be worth £100,000 per week to the 26 year old player and will ensure he is contracted to play at the London Stadium until 2024/25.
By lunch time today the West Ham United medical team will more than likely confirm a lengthy spell in the treatment room for Michail Antonio, just how long will be determined by a full scan today. Things are not looking too promising though, according to the vast majority of those who know and understand football injuries, the damage done to Antonio's hamstring could be really extensive.
There are few, if any, present day TV ex-football pundits that have been more acerbic with their comments about a football club, it's players, owners and supporters than Dean Saunders has been about West Ham United. In his BT Sport TV's capacity as match day pundit and in a similar role for Talk Sport radio, the ex Wales International footballer has relentlessly and arrogantly criticised the Irons.
Despite the attendance of Sky TV for what the Broadcaster hoped would be a giant killing, West Ham United emerged as fairly comfortable winners in the tricky Carabao Cup tie away to Newport County.
Newport: Townsend, Haynes, Howkins, O'Brien, McNamara, Willmott, Dolan, Sheehan, Amond, Whitely, Abrahams Subs: King, Leadbitter, Bennett, Collins, Maloney, Ekpiteta, Inniss
West Ham: Roberto, Zabaleta, Balbuena, Diop, Cresswell, Sanchez, Wishere, Fornals, Snodgrass, Antonio, Ajeti Subs: Fabianski, Johnson, Ogbonna, Coventry, Rice, Anderson, Haller
West Ham hasn’t had the best of starts to this year’s Premier League, but the fans are as optimistic as ever for the rest of the season. Football in general and the Premier League especially are followed throughout the world with much enthusiasm. As a result, it makes the sport a highly bet-worth affair, and fans of West Ham have over time made significant profits piggybacking on the team’s success.
West Ham are the latest big team to brave Newport's Rodney Parade ground, the League Two side have been giant killers on more than one occasion. Manchester City eventually dispatched Mike Flynn's side in the fifth round of the FA Cup, but not before Leicester and Championship club Middlesbrough had been beaten in Wales.
The cameras will be at Newport County's ground for a reason tomorrow evening, the Carabao cup fixture against West Ham will more than likely be the home team's match of the season, and is a potentially massive banana skin for the Barclays Premier League side to avoid. Having lost to Wimbledon if the FA Cup by fielding an under strength side, Manuel Pellegrini will have to make sensible decisions ahead of this match.
West Ham United have finally got the player that the club have been missing for years, a real out and out striker, a genuine leader of the line, and a player whose bones aren't made of paper mache! For years various managers have been 'hamstrung' by the fact that the club did not have a 'proper' fit striker, ironically Sebastian Haller is exactly what Andy Carroll was supposed to be.
Watford: Foster, Femenia, Cathcart, Dawson, Holebas, Hughes, Capoue, Doucoure, Cleverley, Deulofeu, Gray. Subs: Gomes, Janmaat, Kabasele, Chalobah, Quina, Sarr, Welbeck.
West Ham: Fabianski, Fredericks, Diop, Ogbonna, Masuaki, Rice, Noble, Yarmolenko, Lanzini, Anderson, Haller. Subs: Jimenez, Balbuena, Zabaleta, Sanchez, Ajeti, Fornals, Antonio.