West Ham coach far from impressed with club’s young players and sounds warning over their futures

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Many of West Ham United’s young players are not progressing and are fighting for their futures.

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That’s according to development squad coach Dmitri Halajko who has pulled no punches in an interview with the club’s official website.

West Ham’s Under 23s are staring at relegation from Premier League 2 after picking up just nine points from 16 games.

West Ham coach far from impressed with lack of progression in club’s young players

The second string suffered a 5-0 humbling at the hands of Man City U23s on Wednesday.

At reserve level, results and league tables are pretty irrelevant.

But it is the lack of progression in West Ham’s young players that is worrying Halajko most.

And he has fired a warning to his players they must now fight for their futures with decisions on contracts due soon.

“The time of the season where decisions are made on contract renewals is coming up, and the players will want to push on and progress,” Halajko told whufc.com.

“If you don’t get that right, nothing else really matters.

Academy hopefuls warned they face fight for futures

“Individual development is always the number one priority. The team’s development is still a priority, but secondary.

“At the moment we haven’t really got enough individuals pushing in the right direction. That’s where we need to look. We need to look at ourselves as individual players and look ourselves in the mirror and say ‘how can I be better and how can I push on? How can I make sure we get to the next level?’.”

West Ham are famed for their academy having produced a string of top players for club and country down the years.

The latest, Declan Rice, is now captain, one of the first names on David Moyes’s teamsheet and valued at over £100m by his manager.

Odubeko experience shows just how hard it is to step up

Players graduating from the academy and establishing themselves in the Premier League is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence, though.

So Halajko is right to lay it on the line to players who could well find themselves looking for a new club at a much lower level in the next few months.

All they need to do is ask Mipo Odubeko what life is like at the top level.

The 19-year-old striker became the latest academy player to graduate to the first team when got his first proper outing as a second half substitute in the FA Cup defeat at Manchester United last month.

But what should have been a jubilant occasion quickly turned sour when Odubeko was hauled off after 58 minutes of action as the game went into extra-time.

The youngster showed a mature attitude to the double substitution, though.

He has vowed to learn from it and strive even harder to reach the levels required.

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