Enner Valencia helped the West Ham under 21 team to their first win of the season as they sounded thumped Wolves Under 21’s 4-0 at Rush Green. Valencia started in a match that included Spiegel, Knoyle, Hendrie, Obiang, Onariase, Samuelsen, Cullen, Lee, Parfitt-Williams with 16 year old Reece Oxford as captain.
First team coaching staff Nicola Jurcevic, Miljenko Rak and Julian Dicks were are all in attendance to watch how the youngsters got on.
It was left to Enner Valencia to show the youngsters how it is done and he opened the scoring on 33 minutes with a lovely finish after running onto a through-ball. Valencia was taken off at half time. As the second half kicked off Pedro Obiang and Enner Valencia are replaced by Marcus Browne and George Dobson.
Emmanuel Onariase made it 2-0 on 52 minutes after a short range effort from a corner, five minutes later it was Marcus Browne scoring from a Elliot Lee rebound to make it 3-0. Martin Samuelsen was fouled on 65 minutes giving him a penalty which he comfortably converted to make it 4-0 to finish the scoreline and record the first victory of the season for the development squad.
Captain Reece Oxford tweeted out “Nice to captain u21s to our first win of the season. Congrats to Samuelsen and Marcus Browne. Elliot Lee practice on the pen bro”
Marcus Browne said “Good win from the boys tonight, pleased to have scored my first goal for the 21’s… Stolen from Elliot Lee”
Elliot Lee replied “I don’t score pens.. I just get assists on them!”
The win moves them off the bottom of the table with 4 points although bottom placed Brighton U21’s have yet to play their seventh game of the season.
We will need Enner this week against Chelski with Moses missing,and I personally would play Pedro before Noble,
So this was good playing time for them,
Samulsun improves all the time and Oxford is growing as a player each week,
Just more good news and agree the team played just as well without the 2 first teasers,
I though the team actually played better in the second half without the two first teamers. Samuelson was the stand out player for me and his runs into the box resulted in two penalties.