West Ham United first team coach Billy McKinlay hailed a night of positives for West Ham United as Angelo Ogbonna returned from injury, Saïd Benrahma netted a free-kick and a host of Academy prospects were given their chance in a 1-1 draw with National League side Boreham Wood on Tuesday.
The Hammers split their squad, with one side heading to Ipswich Town and the other taking on Boreham Wood at Meadow Park, meaning the majority of the group got the best part of 90 minutes in their legs.
That was the most important thing for McKinlay, who has been delighted with the application and work put in by the players over the first portion of pre-season.
With a little under four weeks to go until the new Premier League season kicks-off against Manchester City, McKinlay is happy with how the group are progressing but says there is still plenty of graft ahead.
It’s all about the minutes at this time of year.
It was a good workout for us. Performance-wise we’re building on the past two weeks in training so we’re not absolutely concerned about that.
The boss likes to get 90 minutes into the majority of players early so we can start to build on that. We’re really pleased tonight in terms of the physical aspect of it, and there’s plenty of work to do.
There was a nice balance tonight between the senior players, who have coaxed the young players through the game pretty well.
They’ve been with us the past two weeks, so they’re pretty familiar, but it’s still a big thing to play in the games with supporters in.
So we’re generally pleased overall, particularly with the physical aspect of it.
There was another game at Ipswich tonight, which gets pretty much everybody 90 minutes, and now we can start to fine tune it over the next week or so.
It’s fantastic to see Angelo back out there on the pitch.
We’ve obviously seen how hard he’s been working – it’s been a really tough time for him and he’s worked exceptionally hard over the last seven, eight months.
And when you get closer to it, obviously the nerves start to come in a little bit, so I was really pleased to see him get his 20, 25 minutes tonight and hopefully now he can build on it.
We’ve got a training group tomorrow – a few boys who weren't involved in the games tonight need some work, so they’ll be in as usual.
Then the games come thick and fast, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday. The season will come pretty quickly, so plenty of work to do, but we’re obviously up for it.
It’s been a really good pre-season so far.
The internationals came back at the start of this week so they’ve had a few days under their belts.
The rest of the group had a good week in Scotland, a good week in France, a couple of games and things have gone realty well.
As I’ve said there’s plenty of work to do and we’re ready for it.
