Hammers held by Leeds

Dmitri Halajko made seven changes from the West Ham U23  team which fell to a Premier League group-stage loss at Wolves last week, with Krisztian Hegyi, Harrison Ashby, Jamal Baptiste, Aji Alese, Dan Chesters, Keenan Forson and Armstrong Okoflex all starting in West Yorkshire.

Alese returned to action after the captain recovered from a nasty head injury in the 2-1 win over Chelsea a fortnight ago.

West Ham started the brighter of the two sides and struck the base of the post through Kamarai Swyer in the first half, but fell behind after 29 minutes when Max Dean stooped to head a low cross past ‘keeper Krisztian Hegyi.

The Hammers came out reinvigorated for the second half and hit two goals in five minutes, both from set-pieces – the first an excellent Harrison Ashby free-kick from 25 yards, the latter a Jamal Baptiste header from Ashby’s corner – to turn things around.

But Leeds ultimately earned a point when Sam Greenwood converted a late penalty after Joe Gelhardt was brought down in the box, leading to a point which sees both teams end their fourth game with seven in total.

“Overall, I think it’s probably just about a fair result,” Halajko told whufc.com.  “I think we should have scored in the first 30 minutes when we were really on top, and that would have changed the game. Instead, we had to chase the game. 

“To come in at 1-0 down at half-time I thought was against the run of play; in the first half-an-hour we were by far the better team and probably had three or four chances we should have done better with. 

“Having said that, Leeds had spells in the game where they were on top too, but we could have capitalised on our spells in the game a little bit more. 

“We started the second half really well and got what we deserved. We just got caught out a little bit in the end, but all in all I think it was a top game of football: really high intensity, end-to-end, two teams going for the win, so I think the lads will have got a lot out of it in terms of their development.”