Earlier this week I tweeted the joint chairman of West ham saying “how comes the youth aren’t getting games when they are clearly good enough?” to this Mr Gold replied “They will get their chance”. I was shocked by how blunt this was but this seem to cause a spark in the west ham family as I got countless tweets replying to this and they were very mixed. I personally believe that the youth are ready with some good players such as Dan Potts who has proved himself as a good player this season featuring in the first team a few times after being recalled from his loan in January of last year. He is the Left back that west ham is lacking and at the age of only just 19 has proved to be a good player. Other good youth players with a lot of time to improve are Sebastian Lletget, Ravel Morrison, Rob Hall, Blair Turgott and Matthias Fanimo along with a lot more of talent in the upbringing of the West Ham future.
But anyway, the response I got was huge as it went from “the youngsters didn’t look good enough when we took a Hammering off Wigan, that’s relegated Wigan!” to “a lot believe that the youth are stifled under big Sam” to correcting Mr Gold’s spelling! So I didn’t really know what to take from the fans. What I did get from this is many people believe Ravel Morrison is a good talent but his attitude is dreadful, hence why Ferguson did not renew his contract. Morrison has been charged for witness intimidation and homophobic threats on twitter. He has been charged of a total of around £9,000. Yes he is a great talent but is it worth it? He could get into more trouble causing a lot of havoc.
Jordan Spence, I personally believe Jordan Spence is a good full-back who can become an important player for west ham in the future. Blair Turgott has proved himself for Bradford in league 2 helping them reach the capital one cup final and the playoffs final of which they won and will be playing in league 1 next season. He is a young, fast English winger who can fill the hole of right wing instead of that waste of space Vaz Te who I wrote about in my last blog and him being one of the biggest flops this season after a very promising season in the championship.
Rob Hall could also fill this gap as also being a young winger/forward who has played for west ham 4 times but is most known for his loan spell at Birmingham where he played 13 games when he was 18.
All of these players have a lot of talent and can be improved with the right help from the staff but going back to the tweet I received, is the youth stifled under Big Sam? Will they ever live up to the expectations and the greatness of some of the other players west ham have produced from the youth such as Lampard and the Ferdinand brothers who have moved to other clubs and won a lot of medals and top division titles between them so why haven’t we won anything lately? Yes it may be hard to keep hold of a big player at the club as we have seen with the whole Diame saga this season where Arsenal wanted to buy him due to his good start to the season with west ham. So what will happen? Only time will tell!