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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
Jack Rosser

West Ham optimistic over Kurt Zouma knee injury in Kidderminster FA Cup win

David Moyes is optimistic West Ham defender Kurt Zouma did not suffer a serious injury in their FA Cup win against Kidderminster.

There was a worrying moment in extra-time when Zouma fell awkwardly and jarred his knee.

The £29.8million summer signing was screaming in pain but he played on after lengthy treatment and completed the game.

The Hammers failed to sign a centre-back in January and, with Angelo Ogbonna ruled out for the rest of the season, an injury to Zouma would leave them with a defensive shortage.

Zouma has just come back from a long injury lay-off and Moyes admitted he was “worried” when the 27-year-old went down.

But after the game Moyes said he hopes Zouma has avoided serious injury.

"I think he is OK,” said Moyes.

“I was a bit worried. Obviously, the plan was not to play him as long but we made changes to try and get ourselves in the cup and stay in the cup so unfortunately, I was not able to bring him off earlier."

A relieved Moyes admitted West Ham got lucky after they survived a huge scare at Kidderminster.

National League North side Kidderminster were seconds away from a famous win before Declan Rice rescued West Ham with a brilliant 91st-minute equaliser to force extra-time.

Jarrod Bowen won it for West Ham in the final seconds of extra-time.

Moyes said: “All credit to Kidderminster, they played really well. We gave them a chance to get a goal in front which made things a wee bit difficult and we had to chase it.

“They deserve all the credit, we were fortunate to get through and they were really unfortunate not to take it to penalties at least.

“I thought we weren’t going to get through (as the game went into injury time). We hadn’t tried well with many things but what we had done hadn’t come off.

“We have got a long way to go if we think we’re going to get into finals. We have a lot of work to do and improve greatly.

“Declan made a difference which he has been doing. It was there for everyone to see and at the time in the game it looked like probably no one else would be able to get the goal. It took a special player to get the goal.”

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