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West Ham United: Conor Coventry needs to play after breaking U21 record
West Ham United have something of a predicament in midfield but Conor Coventry is making a claim to earn his senior squad promotion.
The 22-year-old spent the second half of the 2021-22 campaign on loan at Milton Keynes Dons in League One and helped them to the third division playoffs where Wycombe Wanderers knocked them out in the semi-finals.
He’s also been excelling for the Republic of Ireland Under-21s and on Monday (6 June) he broke their all-time record for the number of appearances at Under-21 level [FA Ireland on Twitter].
He won’t be eligible for the Irish Under-21s from the 2022-23 campaign onwards though and he will be desperately wanting to force his way into the senior setup but he won’t do that if he isn’t getting the games at the London Stadium.
David Moyes has the perfect opportunity now to begin integrating Coventry into the Irons’ first team with Mark Noble hanging up his boots and Alex Kral leaving the club after a dreadful loan spell.
The boss now only has Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek in his midfield department with Pablo Fornals and Manuel Lanzini naturally more attack-minded than a standard central midfielder.
There will almost certainly be some transfer targets picked out for the midfield vacancies but when we have a player as talented as Coventry at our disposal for no fee, we shouldn’t have to spend big money to find a couple of backups.
We still need plenty of reinforcements but Coventry is not the only academy player who could make an impact at the London Stadium and the boss needs to start trusting the youth.
In other West Ham news, we now know what price we will have to pay if we want to bring one of football’s most versatile players to the capital.
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