West Ham United midfielder Pablo Fornals is confident that the Hammers’ three mid-season friendlies have prepared them well for their Premier League return on Boxing Day.
The Hammers will return to competitive action after a 38-day break in a week’s time against the Gunners at the Emirates Stadium, a side who currently sit at the top of the Premier League table.
While West Ham have not played an official match since November 12’s 2-0 home defeat to Leicester City, they have played in three mid-season friendlies away from home.
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West Ham’s trio of friendlies started with a trip to League One side Cambridge United on December 6, winning 4-2 at the Abbey Stadium.
Four days later, they travelled to Udine in Italy to face Udinese where West Ham recorded a 3-1 victory over the Serie A outfit. Their trio of games ended with a 1-1 draw against Premier League rivals Fulham at Craven Cottage.
Spanish midfielder Fornals has featured in all three friendlies and believes that the mid-season clashes will help West Ham be up and ready for the season restarting in a week’s time.
“These games have been important for us to build up to Arsenal,” Fornals told the club website . “We know it’s not the Premier League [in these warm-up games] but we’ve played against great teams and we’ve had good results.
“I think it brings us a positive mentality because we need and deserve [the results] after very good weeks of working hard.
“It felt good out there on the pitch. I think we did a good preparation against great teams. It was a big test on Saturday to play against another Premier League team and I think we did quite well.
“We had some really nice work, we tried to do what we’ve been doing in training and that’s the most important thing.”
West Ham have been light on senior players for their trio of friendlies. Declan Rice, Lucas Paqueta, Thilo Kehrer, Alphonse Areola and Nayef Aguerd were all absent after representing their countries at the World Cup, while Kurt Zouma and Maxwel Cornet also missed out with respective ankle and calf injuries.
Midfielder Tomas Soucek, left-back Aaron Cresswell and striker Michail Antonio have also missed matches due to injury issues, with West Ham missing several players at a time for their friendlies.
Fornals is excited to have his teammates returning back to David Moyes’ squad from the World Cup imminently and believes that the quintet of Hammers players at the tournament will help lift the Irons’ squad.
“We are waiting for our teammates who had the chance to play in the World Cup and the players who have been here have been working really hard to have chances in the future,” Fornals added.
“We were really pleased to have a lot of players in the World Cup because it means we are a nice team.
“Now they have finished, hopefully all of them are ready to put their boots on again and help West Ham achieve our goals.”
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