Behind the current academy graduates lie a fine crop of emerging young stars of the future: Fearon, Golambekis, Kanté and Josh Landers are all emerging into fine young players within the Hammers u21 side.
Behind them and under the spotlight today is West Ham youngster Martin Peychev, identified in todays Guardian.co.uk by Jacob Steinberg and included in their feature on the ‘next generation of the best talents at premier league clubs’.
Whilst Peychev is a name unknown to most of us – me included- he’s predicted to have a great future and finally be ‘the one’ who makes it from academy to first team regular.
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According to Steinberg:
“The 16-year-old is a technical box-to-box midfielder who is making waves. From Southend, Peychev has represented Bulgaria at youth level. He is admired for his passing, vision, creativity and dribbling ability. The question is whether he can push on at West Ham, the club he joined at Under-9 level. Not many youngsters have established themselves in the first team in recent years.
Declan Rice seems an outlier at the Academy of Football. Others have made fleeting appearances at senior level but there appears to be a shortage of homegrown talent in east London at the moment. West Ham will hope that Peychev can buck the trend. “
You’d have to take issue with Steinberg’s suggestion that there’s a shortage of homegrown talent: Four academy graduates are on the cusp of becoming first team regulars with the four mentioned above all just a couple of years behind.
What it does highlight is the quality of coaching available at the Hammers Academy: Under Mark Noble’s direction and with a very high calibre of coaches – who’ve now moved upon to the senior squad- the Academy would seem to be in pretty good shape. Finding a new group of coaches to maintain that high calibre of player produced may well prove to be a challenge.