West Ham hope Dubai trip will pay dividends again

West Ham United assistant manager Neil McDonald is hoping that a recent warm weather break in Dubai will stand the team in good stead for the rest of the season.The club took advantage of a gap in their fixture schedule by heading out for a training camp in the UAE last week.McDonald said it is important that the players are able to train in sunnier climes - and there are few better places to go than Dubai at this time of year.Not only does the emirate boast glorious weather, but its training facilities and hotels are also top of the range, which means the city is extremely popular with professional sports teams."The weather has been bad [in England], so going to Dubai was perfect timing because we might not have been able to have got onto the training pitch here," McDonald remarked.He highlighted the health benefits of spending just a few days in Dubai, as the club's stars were able to get far more vitamin D into their bodies - something that would not have been possible had they stayed in freezing east London.McDonald added that the team embarked on a similar trip in 2012 and the results spoke for themselves."We did the same last year and we came back and only lost one out of 22 games, so that is how much going away in warm weather does for the players," he continued.In fact, the short break gave the Hammers enough fresh impetus to secure promotion from the npower Championship via the play-offs, where they defeated Blackpool in the final at Wembley Stadium.McDonald and manager Sam Allardyce will be hoping the recent spell in the Middle East will give their players an extra edge when they face London rivals Tottenham Hotspur on Monday February 25th.Dubai welcomed a plethora of Premier League stars last week, as West Ham were joined in the city by Reading, Swansea City, Norwich City, Queens Park Rangers and Sunderland.