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No West Ham reunion for THIS former Hammer

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Matthew TaylorAfter missing our last home game owing to a wedding and viewing yet another unspectacular international break, I’m pretty fired up for this weekend’s clash against Premier League strugglers Burnley – but I’m sorry we’re not going to see the familiar face of former West Ham midfielder Matt Taylor at the game.

The ex-Hammer is set to have surgery on Monday to repair an ongoing problem with his achilles, and is expected to be out of action for a while whilst he recovers.

Although he’s no longer a Hammer, I still have a soft spot for Taylor. He was never the world’s most consistent player, but every now and then we’d get a heck of a game out of him. He was outstanding in West Ham’s 0-0 draw at Chelsea in early 2014, and played well in the Capital One Cup during 2013 – including scoring a penalty against current club Burnley during West Ham’s cup run. He never scored the goals I would have liked to have seen whilst at the club, but he would always get stuck in to defend, and l believe he always did his best for the club when he pulled on our shirt.

Given some of the committed performances we saw last season, I was sad to say Taylor go – but equally I understand that he would not get much, if any, playing time this season given our strong summer signings and for that reason I’m pleased another club scooped him up and gave him some substantial playing time.

He played for the majority of Burnley’s first three league matches, and set up an assist in the Chelsea game—a game in which he played extremely well overall. Since the Manchester United game on August 30th, Taylor has not featured for Burnley in attempt to solve his achilles problem through rest—a plan that, unfortunately for Burnley, did not work.

Perhaps given Taylor’s performances for Burnley, it’s a good thing we won’t be seeing him this weekend. Burnley are already boosted by the return of five other injured players; Kieran Trippier, David Jones, Nathaniel Chalobah, Micheal Keane, and Danny Ings, who scored 26 goals for Burnley last season, so that’s… great, and it’s good news for West Ham that they won’t have Taylor in the squad too.

After all – I do like seeing some former Hammers do well, but I hate seeing them do well against us. Still, I wish Taylor a speedy recovery and hope we get a chance to applaud him when Burnley visit Upton Park on May 2nd – and make sure we collect all three points on both occasions.

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