By Joe Ellis

7th Oct, 2022 | 3:10pm

West Ham United: Flynn Downes earning reward for training commitment

Flynn Downes has been the man of the match in the past two West Ham Conference League games thanks to a big training commitment.

According to The Athletic, the boyhood Hammers supporter has been staying behind after training each day to work on his fitness with the club’s specialist coaches

The 23-year-old was the star of the show on Thursday night as the Irons edged past Anderlecht in Belgium thanks to a Gianluca Scamacca strike 10 minutes from time.

Such performances have started to make David Moyes take notice of the midfielder he signed from Swansea City for £12million this summer to be Mark Noble’s long-term replacement at the London Stadium.

So far this season, Downes has played just one singular minute of Premier League football which came on the opening day of the campaign in the 2-0 defeat at home to Manchester City.

Drop Soucek

Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek are a very difficult pairing to split up and Downes is currently finding that out to his cost at Rush Green.

He has done very little if anything wrong since he joined the club and the extra hours on the training pitch will be impressing Moyes more and more each day but even that hasn’t been enough yet.

Soucek, meanwhile, is not having the season many were expecting of him prior to a ball being kicked and now might be the perfect time to take him out of the Premier League firing line.

Downes’ dominance of European games is all well and good but the English top flight is another level altogether and he needs to be tested at that level to know if he can handle it right away.

The former Swansea man could also learn and awful lot from playing alongside Rice in the heart of the West Ham team and become his replacement if he leaves the club in the next couple of years.