West Ham manager David Moyes has a decision to make regarding his team selection and also his tactics when his side face Leeds in the Premier League on Friday night.
There has been a very mysterious silence over the availability of left wing back Arthur Masuaku. The DR Congo international posted on Instagram on Thursday that he had undergone knee surgery and would be out for the foreseeable future.
That post was swiftly deleted by the player not long after it was posted but not soon enough that it wasn’t screengrabbed. There has been no official statement from the club regarding Masuaku’s injury and Moyes never mentioned it at his pre-match press conference on Friday.
Masuaku put in his no longer available post that he had been nursing a knee issue for two years and it is believed to be the reason why he has not accepted two recent international call ups as he prioritises his club career.
The defender is not expected to play in any case against Leeds and what isn’t known is how long he could be out for having gone under the knife.
That leaves Moyes with a quandary on his mind as he picks his team for the matchup against Marcelo Bielsa’s side.
Does he stick with his five at the back formation and make a straight swap for Masuaku with another left wing back? Does he push Aaron Cresswell into Masuaku’s spot and draft in Issa Diop as the third centre half?
Or does he revert to a back four and bring in another midfielder to go to a 4-3-3 which would matchup with Bielsa’s tactics?
Either way, we will find out at 7pm when the team news is announced at Elland Road but Moyes did drop a potential hint during the defeat to Manchester United about what he might do.
Moyes will have been well aware of Masuaku’s knee issue and the defender has been playing through it, playing well in fact, and got through 90 minutes against the Reds last weekend.
Moyes did make a change during the game, albeit with five minutes to go, when he brought on Ben Johnson for only his second appearance of the season, replacing Vladimir Coufal.
Johnson has played at both right and left back since making his debut for the club under Manuel Pellegrini in 2018 but has found himself down the pecking order after the first national lockdown and resumption of the Premier League.
But Johnson was the one that Moyes chose to introduce for a brief five minute run out against United. It might not have been a lot of game time but it might have been a potential hint, knowing what was going to happen with Masuaku.
Johnson now has top flight experience under his belt, admittedly limited, but has shown enormous potential in his few appearances and certainly isn’t fazed by the challenge. He has nine appearances in the Premier League to his name and could well be set to make his tenth when the teams are announced at Elland Road.
