Former West Ham starlet Sonny Perkins scored his first senior goal to rescue Leeds United from an embarrassing FA Cup defeat against Cardiff.
Jesse Marsch’s Premier League side had trailed the Welsh club 2-0 but Perkins scored an injury time equalizer to save the Yorkshire sides blushes by finishing neatly from a cross.
It wasn’t the upset the TV cameras craved but as the former Hammer celebrated his first professional goal, but it felt like a bit of a dagger to the heart of the West Ham fans.
The former academy prodigy had announced that he had to leave The London stadium for ‘the sake of his career’ and this goal probably justifies his decision. Perkins was clearly thrilled as he crowed that “there are no better fans to score against than Leeds fans”.
It’s not all bad news though. With an independent tribunal still to decide upon the compensation fee due to be pad to the Hammers it may well be that Perkins value has just increased.
A classic result of Moyes’ blatant mismanagement of our young players. Who can blame Sonny with no hope of progress to the first team with us? I recall some of our fans berating Perkins, then later Alese, Longelo and Ashby, as being not good enough rather than overlooked. So now we are getting our answer. Meanwhile we have Okoflex back at 18 and Ben Johnson now being rubbished age 22 having played all across the back four. It’s not right, our club management is broken.
I was going to say Sonny Perkins leaves a bad taste in the mouth of West Ham fans but it’s more like a bad smell really isn’t it, since he’s literally dumped a nasty smelling package on the academy of football and the people that worked so hard to make him the player he is today. In his dull humourless interview after scoring in the FA cup he took all the credit for himself saying how hard he’d worked to get to that point. Comparing his character to Declan Rice at the same age there us no comparison.
Best of luck to the boy but a cautionary tale, Freddie Sears scored a great goal on his debut for Hammers some years a go.
We all thought great prospect, sadly not, now plays for Colchester near bottom of league 2