Hammers window hampered by tricky issue
The Hammers window has been hampered by a tricky issue.
I have lost count of the number of non British raised players I have read who could be joining West Ham this season and it really doesn’t make too much sense!
Hammers window hampered by tricky issue
Several weeks ago before the window opened Claret and Hugh was told clearly we would be prioritising home grown players because our squad was so short of them.
The Homegrown Player Rule is an initiative is to allow for more domestic players to be developed from an earlier age in the hope of nurturing more homegrown talent.
It forms part of the Premier League‘s Elite Player Performance Plan and the Premier League proposed a maximum of 17 non-“homegrown” players in each club squad, and the squad size is a maximum of 25. This means that in a full squad , there must be at least eight homegrown players.
One look at our squad shows the following as fitting that requirement and playing first team football anything like regularly: Ben Johnson, Aaron Cresswell, Michael Antonio, James Ward Prowse, Kalvin Phillips, Danny Ings and Jarrod Bowen
The squad also sees such as Kaelen Casey, Reagan Clayton, Levi Laing, Ollie Scarles, Michael Forbes, George Earthy, Daniel Chester, Lewis Orford, Divin Mubama and Callum Marshall involved. Hopefully Callum will come back from West Brom ready to join the other home grown regulars.
Given that Cress, Mikey and Ings could be on their way in the summer we will be left perhaps with Johnson, JWP and Bowen as the most likely home grown regulars with hopefully Phillips joining them. The Hammers currently are being forced to make up the squad with Academy players who seem a long way from making a first team impact.
It’s why I was surprised when reading we wanted Ibrahim Osman and so many others from Europe since the window opened. We can get away with the current situation for now but any more foreign arrivals would make life tricky in the summer.