Sebastien Haller, who had been missing with a mystery "hip injury" is "closer to being available", according to manager David Moyes.
The French striker, who played in both of West Ham's warm-up friendlies against QPR and Crystal Palace prior to the resumption of Premier League activity last month has missed each and every one of the club's first team fixtures since.At the same time, it was revealed that the Hammers had been reported to FIFA for not paying the latest instalment of the striker's £45million transfer fee by his former club Eintracht Frankfurt.
Both Moyes and the club insist it is pure coincidence that Haller has been unable to play at the same time the club defaulted on payments to Frankfurt. And when asked about the situation in his Burnley press conference, Moyes confirmed he would be missing once again.
"Haller is doing better," said Moyes. "He trained yesterday [Monday] and we will see how he comes through today but he is certainly getting closer to being available. Whether he is ready to play is a different thing."
And another player set to miss the game is West Ham's previous record-signing Felipe Anderson, who was on the bench at Newcastle on Sunday but, revealed Moyes, is recovering from a tweaked hamstring.
"I saw him jogging yesterday but he won’t be available for the game tomorrow," confirmed the manager. "He got a very slight grade one hamstring tweak which will normally keep you out for ten to 14 days. He’s not had it before so we hope it is not serious and we can have him back shortly."
Two players who will almost certainly be involved against Burnley though are the in-form Tomas Soucek and Michail Antonio, for whom Moyes had plenty of praise.
"Tomas started to become crucial to us near enough as soon as he arrived," beamed the boss. "He played really well at Liverpool, we were winning there when he had to come off with an injury and I think he has helped us.
"It is what we thought he was capable of but if we are all expecting new players coming in at any club to make an impact immediately, it doesn’t happen very often.
"Quite often players and managers are judged too quickly. They need to be given a chance to bed in. But credit to Tomas, he has had an impact, he’s well liked and definitely contributing to what we’ve got."
And with regards to Antonio, who has bagged two goals in his last two outings, Moyes was equally effusive in his praise - although warned of potential problem should he countinue to have to play 90 minutes every game.
"I think he's got an awful lot to offer," said the boss. "He's got pace and power. He's played as a right wing-back, left wing-back, right winger, left winger and we're [currently] playing him as a centre-forward. So he's someone who can fill several roles, partly because of his pace.
"But tempering that when you've got that pace and power you can suffer injuries. If you look back this is probably his best spell of games, how many 90 minutes he's played, how many continuous games, and I think we are beginning to see more from Micky. He's also at an age where he's maturing a bit in much of the things he does.
"He's helping us. He's carrying the front line for us greatly, he's got us a couple of goals and probably should have had another against Chelsea when he was through. So he's had a couple of chances in every game, let's hope he continues to take them."
Meanwhile Burnley boss Sean Dyche, who brings his team to east London on Wednesday is also dealing with his own problems on the injury front, with several first team regulars currently unavailable. Yet Moyes believes that, given the circumstances of playing so many games in such a short space of time, this was an inevitable conclusion.
"A few clubs have been hit hard by injury," he said. "We were for the first few games when we didn't have Angelo Ogbonna and still don’t have Seb Haller or Robert Snodgrass who are important to us. We have missed those players.
"But I think we all expected this. It’s a bit like after pre-season when teams come back with injuries, picking them up in training or in friendlies. It often happens. I think we all knew there would be injuries but hopefully we’ll be ok.
"Burnley have had a brilliant season, Sean [Dyche] has done a great job and hopefully he is not that interested in this game."
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