The deadline day loan signings of two defenders surely provided a temporary fix for West Ham’s leaky back line.
As we have seen, centre back-turned left back Morato has proved a pretty solid option and has now usurped Ollie Scarles as the first choice left back within the starting line up.
Yet to make an impact, but also apparently now almost ready after an injury, Adama Boiro will also be keen to get game time, perhaps enabling Nuno to switch Morato to his more customary centre of defence role.
Good for the club. Bad for young Ezra Mayers.
The defender has been limited to one run out this season and with the deadline day loans, Mayers now finds Boiro, Morato and Airidas Goalmbeckis seemingly ahead of him in Nuno’s thinking. Surely time for the academy graduate to get out on a half season loan for some much needed football, you’d hope, rather than sitting high and dry waiting for a sniff of even a place on Nuno’s substitutes’ bench.
As the72.co.uk put it last week:
Mayers is still very much in the formative years, so there isn’t a great rush to get him into the WHUFC team. However, he has shown he is ready for the step up from academy football, so if he isn’t going to get chances in East London, the club should strongly consider sanctioning a winter loan exit….
West Ham starlet Mayers will have no shortage of EFL admirers…As a highly-regarded defensive prospect, Mayers will not be short of options. League One and League Two clubs will be keen to snap up the left-sided defender, who can play as a centre-back or full-back.
Brilliant for just 19 years of age but he can’t sit and twiddle his thumbs all season with zero game time.Time for a loan?
Mayers appeared – just once- in the Carabao Cup fixture against Southampton and hasn’t been seen since.
As with fellow academy graduate Kaelan Casey, now on loan at Stevenage, Mayers can only improve with regular game time and the powers that be at West Ham will have to decide whether he’s a ‘keeper’ – in which case send him out for half a season to gain experience – or, much like Callum Marshall and George Earthy, cut him loose to continue his career.
It can only be demoralising for the still nineteen year old to miss out on both senior and u21 matches, another one of those caught betwixt and between two squads meaning – failing some dreadful injury crisis – that his opportunities seem to have just about dried up for the foreseeable future.
Been very surprised he has not been used as a left-back option, because he is quick which is great for covering in defense and overlapping in attack. Never as nervous or as fazed as Scarles was at one stage. With him that would be 3 LBs, Morato & Kilman as left footed CBs with Ezra as emergency cover at left CB.
As it is best go out on loan and not remain in limbo around the 1st team, exactly as mentioned.
Still cannot understand no advanced one-on-one schooling for a few hours a week for those players not released or on loan, but who can carry on improving their game (especially any weak points) while waiting to play.
Good luck to him, he has always looked like a very solid prospect when we have caught sight of him.
Great point about the personal coaching plans for our newbies, youngsters and all.
Might be that our coaching staff are a bit thin on the ground, goalkeeping excepted.
It would not cost much in the grand scheme of things to employ some ‘been there, done it’ types to encourage our players and give them that extra interest in their development.