West Ham’s under 23s can pave the way for the first team when they spring into action against a bang in form Manchester City outfit at Dagenham this afternoon (KO: 1.30 pm).
Academy boss Terry Westley is set to name his youngest team of the season with four under 18s taking their places in the Irons team currently sitting in fifth place in Premier League 2 Division One.
We understand that Conor Coventry, Domingous Quina (above), Ben Johnson, and Rosaire Longelo have all been given the nod.e)
The young Irons are currently unbeaten in three games and will be wanting to go one better than the point they collected in the 0-0 draw against Chelsea last Sunday.
City – holding seventh place – are unbeaten in four games and Westley said: “We need to be at our very best – they have come into real form but hopefully we can set up a good afternoon with a victory and the first team doing the business at Selhurst Park.
We are presently blessed to have such an outstanding squad of U-23 players!
Let’s take a quick look at the players to make sure I’m not talking through my hat!
Aside from the players out on loan (Oxford, Cullen, and Burke), we have some really promising lads, the best I have seen for many years:
Trott; Neufville, Pask, Pike, Rice, Browne, Coventry, Diangana, Fernanades, Haksabanovic, Makasi, Quina (!!), Samuelsen, Hector-Ingram, Holland, Kemp, and Martinez.
Looking ahead a bit, it is imperative that whoever is going to be the first-team gafferr, he must be prepared, and happy, to integrate many of the afore-mentioned players into the first team squad, so we have a team of mixed youth and senior talent. If we can get the mix, just right, we could have a very fine first team within the next 2-3 years. If we don’t use them, we will quickly lose them-they are a very precious group of talented players!!
Agree and I would day at least 2-3 deserve to be in PL squad.
Holland got a goal today already!
But Holland Toni & Sead & of course Rice & Fernandes who has been in & out this season.
Sahko still wants to leave in Jan so I would just bring Toni up ffs I don’t understand why not .
He has scored 8 goals the same amount are all team has in 8 PL games!
First player to score a Hat trick in LS !!
One of my issues w Bilic is he does not trust or fancy playing youth. He has never been a to a PL2 game even tho we gained promotion.
Makes no sense you got a squad of talent you van choice from and u don’t even attend their games to check them out?
I was reading yesterday that Rhian Brewster, one of the stars of the England U17 team and currently at Liverpool, comes from Chadwell Heath and went to school there. He was scouted by Chelsea as an 8 year old and went there initially and then on to Liverpool – West Ham really missed out there!