Following Lewis Orford’s impressive early season form alongside Mohamadou Kanté, it seems West Ham’s new-look midfield is slowly taking shape, with the loan arrival of Divine Magassa and transfer of Arne Engels creating a younger, more combative and potentially more creative quartet of options at the heart of West Ham’s squad.
Orford looks to the manor born at the heart of the Hammers midfield, winning praise from fans and his manager alike and looking like the Championship could be the perfect arena for him to grow into the first team regular and eventual leader that lies within.
On the flip side, Edson Alvarez, Soungoutou Magassa and James Ward Prowse all appear ‘surplus to requirements’ and now on the exit ramp with a week to go in the transfer window as huge change looms yet again in Nuno’s plans.
Ward Prowse back on the Hammers score sheet in pre-season: Not enough to keep him at the club as Lewis Orford excels
Missing from the West Ham starting line up against his boyhood side, James Ward Prowse was a surprising absentee after appearing in pre-season during West Ham’s warm-up games. There were suggestions that the midfielder and Nuno had buried the ‘baldy’ hatchet and that ‘JWP’ might be in contention for a higher profile role in the Championship.
That would now seem unlikely as a deal has been discussed as per Claret and Hugh earlier, to move Ward-Prowse back to the club at which he spent 20 years of his life.
Orford, however at eleven years his junior, is one of the rump of young Hammers who can look on this season in the Championship as their perfect for springboard to career success, which would ironically have been unlikely had the irons remained in the Premier league.
As the nytimes described it:
“Nuno fielded six academy graduates, with forward Ajala, who scored twice, making his first start for the club’s senior side. So did defender Golambeckis and third-choice goalkeeper Herrick. Midfielder Orford registered two assists on his third start of the season, defender Mayers registered his first senior minutes since April, and attacking midfielder Mukasa made his first start since rejoining on a season-long loan from Manchester City.”
Unlike most of his young academy colleagues, Orford is surely destined to retain a starting place the weekend for the trip to Watford as he grows rapidly in stature, whilst Ajala must have earned himself a match day squad slot.
As part of a bright future, Orford’s development spells the end of the line for others as West Ham finally get on and put the ‘slow stodgy midfield’ days behind them with Ward Prowse and Alvarez about to become nothing but soon-forgotten footnotes from a depressing part of West Ham’s history. Amen to that.
Magassa could develop into the defensive midfielder in the group. If we sell him now I don’t think we will recover the outlay and that is criminal with such a young player. Let’s reintegrate him and build on his early promise
“fools to themselves & incompetent ” just to be clear in previous comment.😊
If Orford, Kanté, Divine Mukasa, Engels, (backup Magassa, Soucek, Alvarez), play together regularly could become one of the better midfields in the Championship.
Early days, but would be exciting football with bumps along the way, of course.
Think Magassa was taken on as a young, up and coming prospect and he still is. If the club have not helped him progress & develop into a handy footballer to have at WHU, with years ahead of him, they are fools to themselves & apart from being incompetent.