Slaven Bilic confident exit won’t affect West Ham — UEFA Europa League

Slaven Bilic’s decision to field an inexperienced side for the second leg of West Ham’s Europa League third qualifying round tie away to Astra Giurgiu backfired after they lost 2-1 to the Romanians.

And the gaffer is believed to have left all players in contention to start the Saturday, August 8 clash back in east London.

“They can make us a better team and they give the squad more options and we now have more players who can play like Bilic wants us to”.

“Our ambition is to win the Premier League but we have to sustain that by performance and fighting spirit in every single game”.

He has Diafra Sakho, Mauro Zarate and Mobido Maiga to chose from for the return leg in Romania and their Barclays Premier League opener at Arsenal on Sunday.

With Bilic watching from the stands after his red card in the first leg, it was first-team coach Julian Dicks who was leading things from the dugout.

“Enner visited the consultant on Monday morning, when we discussed the results of the scans he underwent on the injury last Friday”, Vandenbroucke said.

West Ham’s task became even bigger three minutes later, when Budescu found himself in acres of space on the penalty spot and, with plenty of time to pick his shot, made no mistake in finding the net.

New West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic has certainly bought well in the transfer market so far this summer by securing the services of the likes of Pedro Obiang, Dimitri Payet and Manuel Lanzini among others.

Getting knocked out of the competition at this stage, though, might have become part of the plan with speculation mounting the Croatian boss is planning to put out a second-string side on Thursday to protect his squad ahead of the new Premier League season. “After we scored we played some good football – they were doing nothing”.

“We have got a fantastic fan base and that is the key”, he added.

But the former West Ham defender has seen enough from a string of experimental sides to take faith into their domestic campaign, which starts at Arsenal on Sunday.

Arsenal triumphed in both the Asia and Emirates Cups while manager Wenger finally beat Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea at the 14th attempt in last Sunday’s Community Shield.

But, after seeing a specialist to determine the full extent of the problem, the player revealed on Instagram that he does not need to go under the knife to fix the damage.