Psycho knows what’s required at Irons grass roots

Stuart Peace knows as well as anyone the importance of the West Ham Academy.

And that’s great news for the likes of Grady Diangana, Nathan Holland, Xande Silva, Ben Johnson and other leading Academy lights as a new season dawns.

All of them will be seriously pushing their claims for first team games and it’s great news that so many highly talented players are again starting to emerge.

Declan Rice, Grady and Ben Johnson have demonstrated that all is well at the grass roots and both Pearce and manager David Moyes will be keeping a keen eye on the under 23s looking to catch the eye.

Psycho had a couple of playing years at the club and knows full well just how vital  the academy is to the development of a club which has always had a brilliant name in producing the best.

And speaking at https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/august/22-august/stuart-pearce-academy-football-vital-club he said: “If you go back to my time when I came here as a player, just over 20 years ago, alongside me in the team was [Rio] Ferdinand and [Joe] Cole, [Michael] Carrick and [Frank] Lampard – some fantastic players that have come through.

The Academy links were brilliant. Tony Carr was Head of the Academy, and helped me with my coaching badges when I was taking them at the time.

The links were really important then, and I’ve been at pains to point out to the manager this time around that with the likes of Declan [Rice], who has broken through; Ben Johnson at the back end of last year; and Mark Noble, the Club captain, who’s got hundreds of appearances, all three come from the Academy.

The importance of the Academy is absolutely vital – not just to this football club, but to all football clubs.”

He’ll be keenly looking to bring back the days when he saw so many great young products in the team.