By Hughie Southon
Mark Noble is already showing he has a big grip on his new role at the club.
The new director of football takes up his position as the winter transfer window opens and has shown he knows exactly how to operate within it and those over the years to come.
Thus far the recruitment under Moyes and his team is to be proven but Nobes is already talking like an old hand.
His take on where we are and who we will be competing against for players sounds entirely realistic and that in itself shows the board have made a very good appointment indeed.
As what has always been known as a family club it’s a great idea to have a legennd at the top anyway but in this case we know we have a bloke who really does know what he is talking about.
Nobes has been giving his views on recruitment to the Guardian and explained: “We need to be in the market of probably 25 teams across Europe.
“Maybe from fourth to eighth in the Spanish league, the same in the German league. Those are our rivals when we are recruiting players because we can’t afford to buy who we want. It’s not going to happen.
“So we’ve got to be clever and find ways of recruiting young players and developing them, bringing them from the academy to the first team because that’s a massive plus.”
Are you listening David Moyes?
“So we’ve got to be clever and find ways of recruiting young players and developing them, bringing them from the academy to the first team because that’s a massive plus.”
Agree with Nobes, our Academy has for many years produced a tiny number of players capable of sustaining a career in the Premier league. Most of them end up in leagues 1 and 2. So it needs sorting as David Moyes clearly views most of our young players not fit for Premier and the evidence backs that up.
I’ve got no idea what his role will be but it’s blatantly obvious that as a Club we’re getting very little return from the Academy, in the past year we’ve seen some of the young lads in the odd European game but virtually nothing beyond that! 😳
Moyes obviously doesn’t trust the young lads for his own reasons, not obvious to onlookers and the kids tend to drift way because they can’t see a future at West Ham – let’s hope if he does nothing else that Nobe’s Champions the youngsters and helps them get ready for the Premier League! 🙄