{"id":241620,"date":"2025-11-03T16:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/241620\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T16:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:21:11","slug":"one-of-our-own-shines-as-west-hams-midfield-finds-new-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/241620\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOne Of Our Own\u201d Shines As West Ham\u2019s Midfield Finds New Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Ham midfielder Freddie Potts has had to wait longer than he\u2019d imagined for his first real taste of victory in claret and blue.<\/p>\n

Named Man of the Match by Sky Sports for his performance against Newcastle<\/a>, Potts featured heavily in pre-season under Graham Potter \u2014 only to be dropped once Premier League action began. Since then, the academy graduate has had to stay patient, biding his time for a proper chance.<\/p>\n

But alongside Mateus Fernandes, the 21-year-old finally seized his moment in Nuno Espirito Santo\u2019s revamped midfield. The pair brought energy, bite, and composure to the engine room, dictating play with sharp, progressive passing and showing the kind of hunger the team has been missing.<\/p>\n

Most Read on West Ham News<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Freddie Potts won man of the match for his performance against Newcastle<\/p>\n

Potts and Fernandes Impress in Nuno\u2019s Midfield<\/p>\n

It was their tackling and duelling, though, that likely pleased Nuno most \u2014 levels above what Andy Irving and Tom\u00e1\u0161 Sou\u010dek managed the week before. Even more impressive was the calibre of opposition, with Newcastle\u2019s<\/a> midfield trio of Bruno Guimar\u00e3es, Joelinton, and Lewis Miley widely regarded as one of the Premier League\u2019s best-balanced units.<\/p>\n

The fans recognised the effort too, with chants of \u201cFreddie Potts, he\u2019s one of our own\u201d echoing around the London Stadium throughout the match.<\/p>\n

Nuno Espirito Santo was quick to praise his young midfielders<\/a> after the final whistle:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Freddie and Mateus did a good game. The idea was to try and control the middle because Newcastle have Bruno, they have Joelinton, they have some quality players.
If you allow them to play freely, they\u2019ll put you on the ropes. It was important to see that we were suffering but not conceding. We were resilient without the ball, and when we\u2019re organised, we\u2019re hard to beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that Potts and Fernandes must now form the foundation of West Ham\u2019s midfield for the foreseeable future. If they can perform with that level of maturity and control against Eddie Howe\u2019s formidable side, there\u2019s no reason they can\u2019t do it against anyone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Ham midfielder Freddie Potts has had to wait longer than he\u2019d imagined for his first real taste…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-241620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}