Slav thumbs up to the Hammers kids

Slaven Bilic has been impressed sufficiently with the Hammers young guns to take them onto the second stage of the pre-season in Germany.

Young Hammers Reece Burke, Josh Cullen, Moses Makasi, Nathan Holland, Toni Martinez, Declan Rice …and Ashley Fletcher have caught the eye in the opening  games in Austria.

Academy boss Terry Westley has been in touch with them every day feeding advice into each of them and in a previous CandH exclusive explained how they needed to make a big impact from the start of each match to ensure they caught the manager’s eye.

Now Bilic – in taking them on the next stage of pre-season – has clearly accepted that the lads remain very much in his thoughts as the season approaches.

Rice (above right) , Holland  and Cullen (below right ) have probably been the stand out performers and it’s going to be very interesting to see which of the group get more chances over the next three games against Werder Bremen on the 28th and 29th of July in the Betway Cup and against  Altona on August 1.

The Hammers then conclude their pre-season against Manchester City in Iceland on August 4.