Facing a spell out of the West Ham side

I had to come off against West Brom at the weekend because I split the back of my ear open. I went up for a header, got caught and had to have it all stitched back up. It´s fine now but unfortunately I´ve picked up another injury. I sprained my ankle in training on Monday and I´m looking at spending the next three to four weeks on the sidelines.

I just went over on it, it happens to a lot of players. It´s not too serious, but it will take a few weeks to heal properly. We have the international break in three weeks. Hopefully I´ll be back after that.

It´s been all change at Upton Park recently. It was a little bit of a surprise when we heard Alan Curbishley was leaving but it was his decision. We only know what we read in the papers and watched on TV.

People are saying things were taken out of his hands and he made the decision to go. We don´t know the ins and outs of it all so it´s not really for us to go shouting about. It´s happened now and, as players, we´ve got to get on with it.

Gianfranco Zola was unveiled as our new manager last week. It´s great for me as a striker and I can learn a lot from him. He has brought in Steve Clarke from Chelsea. Steve´s got a wealth of experience. He´s got a great reputation and has worked with some of the best players around. I´ve only met him briefly because I got injured on Monday.

When Zola played he was a very different type of striker to me. When I was younger I looked up to people like Alan Shearer but I admired Zola too. He was fantastic. He is a nice guy; he´s been really good with the players so far in training.

I´m disappointed I haven´t been able to build on the two goals I got in our season opener against Wigan. It was a great start. I would have liked to have added a few more goals by now. We´ve started reasonably well so I can´t complain at the moment. Hopefully we can build on our good start against Newcastle this weekend.

I´m not playing but I´ll go along to cheer the lads on. Newcastle had a difficult result against Hull at the weekend and they´ll want to improve on their current situation. But we´ve got a new manager in charge who all the lads will want to impress. We need to win as many home games as we can. It would be a great start for the manager but it helps everybody.

Thanks for visiting my site, I´ll keep you updated on my return from injury right here.

Bye for now, Dean.