West Ham cautious over Carroll
Andy Carroll will undergo another scan on his injured hamstring next week, with West Ham United cautious over setting a return date for the striker.
Carroll, 23, signed for West Ham in the summer from Liverpool on a season-long loan, and he made an impression on his debut as he played a role in their 3-0 win over Fulham.
But the forward damaged his hamstring in that match, and he was initially ruled out for six weeks - although recent reports have suggested he could make an early comeback from his injury.
However, a West Ham source has told ESPN: "It is not a precise science, if you speak to anybody about hamstrings they'll confirm that. So nobody can say how long it will be.
"He'll be rescanned next week, then we'll know more. The odds of him playing against Sunderland would be no more than 10%. There is a 35% chance of a comeback against Arsenal.
"If he doesn't make it back until Southampton that will be seven weeks out, and there is even a slight 5% chance it could be longer."
Meanwhile, Hammers boss Sam Allardyce is likely to replace Carroll with Carlton Cole for the trip to Norwich on Saturday, in what would be his 150th start for the team.
And Allardyce is hopeful that the former Chelsea striker can rekindle some of the form that he produced last season to help fire the club into the Premier League.
"He is an obvious replacement and we would like Carlton to do how he finished off last season," Allardyce said.
"He scored a hatful of goals for us and helped us get back into this lucrative Premier League so we would like him to step in and start scoring the goals he did towards the back-end of last season. We hope he can hit the goalscoring trail when he gets the opportunity on Saturday.''
