It’s Holland AGAIN as the Irons win

West Ham U23s won their fnal Premier League International Cup match last night with a 3-1 victory at Brighton.

The goals came from a near inevitable Nathan Holland first-half effort and Alfie Lewis and Anthony Scully’s second-half strikes enough to register them the points.

In an unusual scheduling quirk, West Ham’s  the game was Brighton’s first and the Irons will therefore not know whether they have qualified until Brighton have played their other two games.

However, lead coach Dmitri Halajko commented: “I think we deserve to go through.We have Six points out of nine, and I think we’ve been the dominant team in the group.

“We beat Valencia, won tonight, and against Wolfsburg, although we didn’t win the game, I thought we were the better team, so all in all we’ve been the dominant team.

“We’ve competed and excelled against three top teams, and we should go through. Hopefully the rest of the group will work out the way we want it to.”

The U23s fell behind midway through the first half when Bojan Radulovic scord but the team recovered well and were on level terms ten minutes later through an impressive solo goal from Nathan Holland.

The youngsters in Claret and Blue grew into more and more of a force as the game wore on, with second-half tap-ins by Alfie Lewis and Anthony Scully confirming victory for Halajko’s men.

“I thought it was a real top-level game – a tough game,” Halajko observed. “We had to be at our best to get anything out of it.

“We’re really happy with how hard we worked and how well we pressed. I thought we were hard to play through, and then on the ball we played some really nice stuff today, both out wide, on the flanks, getting crosses in, and then also through the middle with some really intricate combination play.

ClaretandHugh says: The under 23s have been in amazing form all season notably at a tome when we all need some cheer. And one again it was near goal a game Nathan Holland who was back on the score sheet with a seriusly impressive solo goal. It clearly is well past time to discover whether the winger has what it takes at frst team level or whether he would be better off going out on loan in the January window. Clearly this level is too easy for him and in fairness he needs to be given the chance to show where he is at precisely. With several selection problems this weekend for the Chelsea game it may not be the ideal time for him but the lad certainly needs to be given a chance very soon as we all need to know where he is at after his feats at under 23 level.