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Although buoyed by the return of Marko Arnoutovic from injury, Manuel Pellegrini still has the unenviable task of selecting a team capable of seeing off Brighton & Hove Albion at the London Stadium from an increasingly long injury list.
Fabian Balbuena has joined the list of long-term injuries with no return date after suffering from knee ligament damage, Balbuena joins Jack Wilshere, Winston Reid, Ryan Fredericks, Andrily Yarmolenko, Carlos Sanchez and Manuel Lanzini with no exact date scheduled for their return.

No, this is not an article relating to West Ham United's unbelievable injury list, a list that keeps on growing! Instead it is about the price of being a football 'mascot', it may seem naive now, but back in the day 'mascots' either wore silly costumes and took part in dodgy penalty shoot outs, or, were selected because they had been ill or because they were randomly selected from the club's 'youth' membership. The BBC, despite employing Mark Lawrenson, usually research things properly, it is to them that we must credit the following information.

Having already worked with Samir Nasri it really was a no brainer for Hammers boss Manuel Pellegrini to sanction a short term loan deal for Samir Nasri, once the Frenchman had proved his fitness following a long suspension for inadvertently having broken FIFA doping laws. Here is what Pellegrini said “I am very pleased to welcome Samir to West Ham United, he is a player I obviously know well from our time together at Manchester City and I am happy to be working with him again.