George Earthy played a key role as West Ham United U18s extended their winning start to the 2022/23 season with a 4-0 victory over Crystal Palace on Saturday.
The young Hammers raced into an early three goal lead after a dominant first half performance. Oliver Scarles' well placed free kick gave the Irons the lead before Earthy and Callum Marshall added to their goal tallies before the interval.
Finley Herrick was on hand to save a late Crystal Palace penalty and Gideon Kodua's late strike capped off a perfect day for Kevin Keen's side.
The Hammers are now fifteen points clear at the top of the U18s Premier League South table after winning their opening eleven league matches, and Earthy was delighted with the team's performance after an impressive victory.
"We're really pleased with that," Earthy told whufc.com. "We finished 2022 in really good form and we wanted to start this year in the right manner. It was a really strong performance.
"We have the exact same goals as we had last year, so we just want to keep working hard and winning matches."
The 18-year-old playmaker suggested that it was a near perfect display from the young side, with four goals accompanied by a clean sheet.
He continued: "It was a really good performance, but in my opinion we could have scored even more. We can still grow even more and we could've been more clinical and more ruthless today.
"The clean sheet is fantastic for us, we haven't kept as many of those as we would have liked recently, so that's a real positive for us. To win 4-0 is obviously an impressive victory, so it was a good way to start the year."
The attacking midfielder scored a sensational solo goal to put the Hammers 2-0 ahead thirteen minutes into the match.
Earthy was delighted to contribute to the team's success.
"It was nice to get a goal," Earthy smiled. "It's something that I try to do in training and it came off today. I just tried to create an opportunity for myself or for a teammate and a shooting opportunity opened up at the end of my run.
"Thankfully I was able to finish it off, it is always nice to help the team out with a goal."
After a flawless start to the season, Earthy suggested that the U18s need to stay focused on the upcoming matches.
"We need to keep putting in strong performances that will continue our momentum. We're happy with where we are but we can't get complacent.
"It's obviously been a great start to the season but we just want to take things game by game. We want to keep getting results."
