David Moyes believes two of his players missed the defeat to Manchester City on Wednesday night due to potential food poisoning, and another, due to a virus.

The Hammers were left with three late squad withdrawals hours before their 3-0 loss to the Premier League leaders City at the Etihad Stadium, with captain Declan Rice, centre-back Nayef Aguerd and midfielder Tomas Soucek all leaving the squad hours before kick-off due to illness. All three had travelled to Manchester and were late withdraws.

“I knew in the morning that there had been sickness and one of them had a real high temperature.,” said Moyes. “One of them had to go away at 11 o’clock and the other two at left at two o’clock today, once they weren’t going to get any better.

“We had given them a chance in the morning to recover, sleep longer, see how they were. They were in Manchester with the rest of the team so we had to send them away in cars later this afternoon to go home.

“There was another staff member who had sickness as well so that’s why we were worried if it was a bug or food poisoning, we weren’t sure what it was.”

Moyes had said that he hopes the trio are back in contention but there are no guarantees

“I have got to hope that they are, two of them we are not sure if it is maybe a bit of food poisoning that they have maybe picked up at the training ground or whether it was at the hotel and one them we think has got a virus,”