Magnificent young Irons reach play-offs

The young Hammers confirmed their place in the Premier League 2 play-offs with an emphatic 4-0 thrashing of West Bromwich Albion last night.

The U23s travelled to the Hawthorns knowing their fate wasn’t in their own hands with result elsewhere needing to work in their favour.

But they seriously turned on the style with goals from Dan Kemp, two from Martin Samuelsen  and a quite magnificent free kick from Nathan Holland (pictured above).

And afterwards boss Terry Westley said: ““It could have been our last game tonight, and we wanted to really play well. We wanted to see evidence of all the work that’s been done over the last three years, and that culminated in a brilliant win away from home and also qualification [for the play-offs] with Blackburn and Villa drawing. We got both things we wished for.

“Tonight, all credit to the players because it was some performance. We started right on the front foot. The front four really caused their back players problems. That was the difference.