When Reece Oxford signed a five-year deal with West Ham back in 2016, big things were expected. The young academy graduate was hailed as the future, the next Bobby Moore according to some, and had enjoyed the sort of first team debut that 16-year-olds dreams are made of.
Oxford announced his arrival when he outplayed Mesut Ozil as a defensive midfielder on his Irons debut against Arsenal at the Emirates in 2015, aged just 16 years and 198 days. This meteoric rise to prominence prompted the club to offer the youngster a £20,000 per week contract to keep him out of the clutches of those pesky top six clubs who were eyeing the hottest talent in town.
Unfortunately for Oxford and West Ham, things didn’t work out too well and he failed to live up to the hype. Oxford, now 25, plays for German side Augsburg, yet his legacy in East London still lives on for all the wrong reasons.
Oxford failed to impress at Reading
To put it bluntly, the failure of Oxford to make it at West Ham appears to have impacted almost every academy graduate since. The club are clearly cautious about lightning striking twice and therefore reluctant to hand out big deals to young Hammers.
What West Ham perceives to be ‘big contracts’ are now the norm when West Ham’s young players join up with their international teammates on England duties.
Set aside one’s own opinions of there being too much money in football and look at the reality. England’s under-21’s and even under-18’s are peppered with young footballers who earn £20,000 per week plus. Therefore, West Ham’s kids are the poor relations, and it’s easy to see why other clubs can swoop in and entice Hammers youngsters when they are on such comparatively low wages.
It’s as if West Ham has a ‘one size fits all’ policy for dealing with academy graduates, dictated by the Reece Oxford failure. Moreover, the wage structure remains the same irrespective of whether Hammers youngsters are thriving internationally and domestically.
So, it’s extremely pleasing to see the club coming to an agreement with Lewis Orford, who is an incredibly talented player. There is a reason the likes of Aston Villa want to sign the England under-18 captain, who is also an FA Youth Cup winner and one of the best players in Premier League 2 last season.
Hopefully, this can herald a new era for the Hammers academy and finally lay the ghost of Reece Oxford to rest.
So often I have seen the club letting youngsters go Reece Oxford amongst them, joining him are the likes of Sonny Perkins and any other number of ‘talented’ youngsters who are the new messiah.
Fans do not understand the mechanics of this business and the huge sums of money involved, agents have moved in and clouded the headspace of these young players with dreams of a lucrative career, chuck in their family and social media and you are left with ‘attitude issues’ and a huge bubble of expectation built up in many young British born players. So clubs look elsewhere for tried and trusted players who have gotten through this phase
When that bubble bursts it can leave deflated egos and clubs facing a financial crisis with fans lambasting the owners and club for letting players go and not giving them a chance. See it every season. The game is littered with over egged players with poor attitude problems. Worth every fan reading Tony Carrs book and how he handled it and what he sees as the most important ingredient in a young players chances of making it at the top level….. ‘Attitude’.
A lot of negativity about Fullkrug the man is a dying breed who is deemed limited due to age and lack of pace however and probably seen as unfashionable. If we get two good seasons out of him and he helps us qualify for europe for me that would represent good business for the figures mentioned
With a coach that uses academy players it can be seen weather they’re worth it or not. There’s no way of knowing without game time and with game time it’s feasible to sell for a better price to lower league clubs if they’re not quite there or form drops away.
There will be the occasional U21 player on north of £20k but I think you’ll find most academies, especially for 1st and 2nd year scholars will have a strict wage structure in place. You only have to look at some of the Arsenal youngsters leaving for ‘better money’ to see this is all being fuelled by agents.
Reece was a very unfortunate turn of events. I don’t blame the club for what they did. At the time I felt they had actually done the right thing for someone with so much talent. Unfortunately non-footballing related issues were partially to blame.
Maybe we could get Reece Oxford back! Might be able to actually do that one.
😂 Bravo Paul
I watched Augsburg play against my local 3rd tier team and noticed Oxford wasn’t playing. Apparently he is suffering from long COVID and hasn’t played for a long time.