Hammers boss Slaven Bilic says he is going to find it very hard to please all his players this season, sighting the partnership between Javier Hernandez and Andy Carroll as a potential problem if he chooses to play only one up front.

Andy Carroll has been hampered with injuries since joining West Ham, and recently returned after five months out with a hip injury. However, his return to action has put big question marks over the positioning of star striker Javier Hernandez, who joined the Hammers from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer and was supposed to feature as their main striker throughout the season.

Hernandez was shifted over the the left hand side in the Hammers’ latest fixture against West Brom, a position which is very much different from his favoured striking role. But Bilic admits he could play with two up front, but says it would be difficult to please everyone when it comes to positions within the team.

“It’s possible, of course, and I’m thinking about that the most.”

“It’s very hard to put two of them on their ideal positions as two strikers, which looks really good on paper.”

“It’s easy to do that of course, but then it’s very hard to have three at the back…it’s almost impossible.”

“Chicharito is at the moment playing in a position that is not his ideal position,” said Bilic.

“But I spoke to him and he is a great lad and I said ‘we have priorities and at the moment the team needs you there’ and he is doing the job, of course.”

“Now we have to keep it – we have to keep the stability, we can’t lose it.”

Following the return from his injury, the boss insisted that the club must protect Carroll by resting the 28-year-old well between games.

“Of course we have to manage him,” he said.

“He looks good, he looks fit and he is training.”

“Hopefully he is going to last, because that was his problem for ages now – that he is not available all the time.”

“We are managing him, to be fair, a little bit differently this season. Definitely, we will – never say never of course – never rush him.”

“When he has just come back, we will try to avoid him playing three games a week, let’s say, for 90 minutes.”

[Quotes via Sky Sports]