Jonathan Northcroft, Football Correspondent for The Sunday Times, has conducted an interview with West Ham youngster Reece Oxford in which the 19-year-old expresses his fears that he may have to leave the club in January if he cannot break into the first team.
On Friday the same again: the familiar routine, the rut Reece Oxford is desperate to climb out of. Training over, on the wall at Rush Green training ground went the sheet listing West Ham’s matchday squad. No matter how often you are left out you still hope — but there it was again, 18 names and Oxford’s not among them.
“Every time, it hurts,” he says, and this has been a season of little punches to the gut just like that: demotion to the under-23s, nasties on social media, hearing Manuel Pellegrini say he’d been warned about his attitude.
Yesterday, instead of figuring versus Manchester City, and challenging John Stones in a battle of young ball-playing centre-backs, Oxford was home following West Ham’s game via his scores app. “I sit on the settee and feel angry. I don’t want to be there. I want to be on the pitch, playing against these big teams,” he says. “I’ve just got to find my way.”
With regard to that he feels he’s reaching crunch time. Time to play regularly for West Ham — or to go. The case of Oxford is one that should concern all of the English game for here, in terms of talent, is a jewel: West Ham’s youngest ever player, a former England youth captain who outshone Kylian Mbappe when they met at under-17 level, who as recently as last year — on loan at Borussia Monchengladbach — was nominated for the European Golden Boy award. Someone who made West Ham’s bench at 15 and at 16 muzzled Mesut Ozil versus Arsenal on his Premier League debut. Someone who Manchester United and Red Bull Leipzig have bid £20m for, and in whom Arsenal registered interest. West Ham gave him a £1m-a-year contract in 2016 and yet since March of that year he has played just seven Premier League minutes. This season Oxford has not been in a single Premier League matchday squad, his football coming in the Checkatrade Trophy and for West Ham’s under-23s.
How did he get here? Before that, this is what Oxford is doing to try to escape his situation. On days off he goes to an all-weather pitch in Barnet with a self-hired personal trainer, continuing work they started in the summer with drills in his back garden and at a Power League in Muswell Hill.
At West Ham, after a heart-to-heart, under-23 coach Liam Canning devised a special programme for him which meant Oxford getting to training an hour before the others, at 8.30am, for supplementary gym and technical work. Enjoying it, for the last fortnight he has been getting in at 7.30am, and staying until 5pm, so he can fit in even more.
These “little extras” are something he is now focused on, feeling he missed out when he was the boy sensation. “At 16, I got on the first-team programme but it’s not the same as for youth players. I should have been doing my gym work. The extras the other 16 and 17-year-olds were doing. Instead, I was just training, going home, with the rest of the first team. I blame myself a bit but I think the club should have been on me more.”
Another regret is a loan to Reading in 2016-17. He was 18 and Jaap Stam preferred experience in defence. He played five times and “I feel like I wasted a season”. He loved being at Gladbach in 2017-18 and feels unlucky that West Ham recalled him in January, just after he had made three consecutive starts and been told by the manager, Dieter Hecking, that he was now a first-choice player.
He sprained his ankle in his first training session back at Rush Green and returned to only manage two FA Cup appearances and a brief league cameo before being sent to Germany again. Having lost fitness, he made just four more Bundesliga appearances — albeit Gladbach rated him highly enough to offer £10m to buy him permanently.
West Ham rebuffed them and “I was looking forward to getting back to the club. I just wanted to kick on. I thought I had a good pre-season but the club had bought so many new players they didn’t play me [on tour] and then I was in the 23s.
“I don’t want to be in the 23s. I see it as I’ve been there, done that, and suddenly you have doubts. Am I good enough? Have I lost it?” However he soon found the contrary, that the under-23 games were all too easy and he admits cruising “in second gear” in a few early ones. Now, though, he is determined to push for Pellegrini’s attention in every 23s appearance and every training session and hopes his ‘extras’ are noticed. He wants to change the manager’s misconceptions.
“I haven’t really had a conversation with Pellegrini. We last spoke on the training pitch and he told me the reason I haven’t been in and around the team was because of my attitude. Or the perception of my attitude. He said he’d heard… from who, I don’t know. But other people in the club know me — I’m a very laid-back person,” Oxford says. “Maybe the perception of laid-back is bad.” In person Oxford is polite, respectful, certainly not arrogant — but definitely easy-going and he reflects that maybe being relaxed is sometimes misconstrued “as not wanting it enough — which is not the case. I’m determined to succeed.
“But I can’t change who I am off the pitch. And being laid-back is something I can take onto the pitch as an asset. I need to be confident on the ball, I need to be calm, and when I made my debut against Arsenal what Slaven Bilic liked was that I was so relaxed.”
It’s not like money has changed him. He is still on an allowance. His mother, Youmna, a bright woman who works in HR, takes care of his finances. What does change, when you earn well, is how others perceive you. “People knew I was on big money and they see you differently. Even coaches in the club or people from other clubs. They say, ‘oh, he’s on this amount when he’s not even playing’ and it’s hard to deal with when you’re hearing all this stuff and you’re a kid. But they [West Ham] gave me the money. I didn’t force them.”
He no longer looks at social media, because where once it was full of praise he now gets abuse, but in the street “fans stop me and say ‘why aren’t you playing? You’re such a good young talent. I don’t know why they aren’t giving you the opportunity’.” He’s driven to “get everyone on my side and show them I still have the potential they said I had before.”
He is unwavering in his belief in that potential. “You look at players your age, like Declan Rice, who has done so well, and think that’s the challenge, I should be doing that. But I also look at older players, who have been in first teams for years, and know what ability I’ve got and that it is the same as them.
“I feel if I do get the chance to play in a first team I would have a big opportunity to play for England, because [Gareth Southgate] is picking young players: 100% I know I can be in the England squad and that is still my goal — captaining England at a World Cup or a Euros.”
What next? The January window is approaching and if he is still not making first-team progress at West Ham, Oxford would prefer to move. Premier League, Bundesliga — he is open-minded. He just wants to play. A permanent transfer would be better, he thinks.
“Things can change round at West Ham in a week,” Oxford says. “I think Pellegrini believes if you’re training hard you can get in and I look at Grady [Diangana]. He’s kicking on now. I want that to be me.
“But if I’m not playing, I hope West Ham would look kindly on my situation and let me go, because there’s no point being 20 and not around the first team. Hopefully everyone wants me to fulfil the potential they’ve seen.
“The club has done a lot for me. Given me my debut. Made me the player I am. I could never talk down the club. But right now I need to be playing and if West Ham are not playing me, I’ve got to move on and part ways.”
This piece originally appeared in The Sunday Times and was written by Jonathan Northcroft.