Last night West Ham faced Wycombe Wanderers in the newly-constructed Check-a-Trade Cup. Featuring a squad of burgeoning young stars, they weren’t enough to test the mettle of their opponents as they succumbed to a 3-0 defeat at Adam’s Park. The squad, was a very young side, with Sam Howes between the sticks and a back four consisting of Noha Sylvestre at right back, Alex Pike and Tunji Akinola the centre-back pairing and Vashon Neufville at left back.
As mentioned before regarding the age, the oldest being Alex Pike at 19, they certainly had their hands full marking the very experienced 34-year old, Adebayo Akinfenwa. Under the mantra of the ‘world’s strongest footballer’, Pike seemed not to take the task, or the defeat, too personally.
Left “battered and bruised”, the young player has said according to the Official West Ham website: “It was hard marking Akinfenwa – he is certainly as strong as he looks! He’s a big lad and it just means you have to be either cleverer or stronger than him. Since you can’t be stronger, it leaves you with just one option.”
The young side definitely impressed, even receiving praise from the opposing manager, mentioning that they had ‘thrown up some surprises’. Two second half strikes were enough to sink their efforts, however, but all seems not to be lost. Wycombe had a much older and much more experienced side out than West Ham had done and it was brought up by the Chairboy’s manager. “We knew what we had to do and did a professional job. It was a mismatch at times as they had 17 and 18-year-olds out there. I remember being that age and scrapping against men who had been around for a long time, and it’s tough, but you have take the lesson and learn from it.”
Alex Pike had plenty to say after the match, continuing: “I think we had some great chances at the end and if we were a little tighter at set pieces and did the basics right, we would have stayed in with a chance to win.”
“But this is why we’re in this competition. We get different challenges and that’s what gives you the experience ahead of the next stage of our careers, whether that’s a loan or whatever.”
On the attacking side of things, even though we didn’t score a goal, we looked quite threatening. Marcus Browne had another good game for West Ham and narrowly missed out on a goal after firing an effort just wide of the post and other youngster, Jahmal Hector-Ingram coming close on two occasions.
It’s certainly very refreshing to hear our youngsters upbeat after a defeat like that, coming across a vastly more experienced side seems to have had an amazing effect on the players, hopefully, we see more of these youngsters getting chances like they did yesterday in the future.
