West Ham United U21s Lead coach Mark Robson was confident his side made a positive step forwards ahead of the resumption of their 2022/23 season when they faced off against Crawley Town on Tuesday afternoon.
The U21s are back in competitive action on January 6 away to Everton, and hosted EFL League Two side Crawley in a behind-closed-doors friendly in preparation.
And while the young Hammers fell to a 2-1 defeat with former Academy of Football player Jack Powell striking the winner, there were plenty of positives for the U21s to take.
Robson spoke about his hopes for the second half of the season, a good run-out against Crawley Town, and building on the winning momentum, with the U21s looking for a fourth competitive win on the bounce when Premier League 2 returns in 2023.
I thought we played really well against Crawley Town.
It has been just over a month now without a game but we’ve worked hard in training, we've done loads of training sessions, and obviously we are now trying to try to put it into a game.
First half, we did really well. I knew we'd get a little bit tired and that’s not an excuse for the second half performance. But I've sort of half-expected it really. Without that momentum of playing week in week out, we were sort of fatiguing in the second half for sure.
I was disappointed with our second half performance because we did not control the game.
And even when you're tired, you can still try and control it as best as you can. And we didn't quite do that second half, so credit to them.
But if I could just pull up that first 45 minutes today. It was very impressive, the overall performance in the first half I thought was very, very good.
It’s quite a new team this season compared to last season.
Lots of players going out on loan, and lots of younger players coming in getting opportunities - and that's right too because we've got some good young players.
But we knew we'd find it a little bit difficult this season. We have actually played very, very well. We’ve actually had games where I got to say we've probably lost games when we shouldn't have lost this season.
We need to hit the ground running, which I think we will do from what I've seen so far.
The young lads have been back playing with the younger ones, which has been really good. So their momentum is still there. They are doing really well with Kevin [Keen] and the rest of the staff in the U18s teams.
We’re looking forward to the next part of the challenge and making sure that we attack Premier League 2 in the right way, with the younger ones mixed with some of the old ones that are still here.
But in terms of development for the boys, we want to get a winning mentality into them. And certainly in those last three games [before the mid-season break] we saw that.
We’ve got a really strong group and a pathway for these players to come through as well.
The players can see that and they see the opportunities that they're getting so it’s all looking good.
We may have one or two that might go out on loan, but we feel like we've got enough [quality through the Academy] to replace them and to make the group [that we use at U21 level] a strong strong one for the back end of the season.
