West Ham United cruised through to the fourth round of the Carabao Cup with an 8-0 win.
Declan Rice has taken to Twitter to laud the West Ham academy after four of the club’s youngsters helped the Hammers cruise through their third round Carabao Cup tie with Macclesfield on Wednesday.
The Irons were superb against the League Two side at the London Stadium. After breaking the deadlock through Michail Antonio after 29 minutes, the home side breezed through the gears and had scored another seven inside the next 53 minutes.
Robert Snodgrass scored twice, while Lucas Perez, Ryan Fredericks and Angelo Ogbonna all got one each to make the score 6-0 before Grady Diangana took centre-stage to mark his senior debut with a brace.
Diangana was not the only youngster handed a chance by Manuel Pellegrini on the night. Declan Rice – who is, of course, much more established in the first-team – had to come on early to replace Carlos Sanchez, while Joe Powell and Conor Coventry also made their senior bows in the win.
The West Ham fans would have been forgiven for feeling before kick-off that there was little to gain from the game against the Football League’s bottom side. Anything less than an emphatic win would have probably been considered slightly underwhelming, but the victory looks set to go down as an important night for the club.
The performance highlighted just how many quality youngsters the Hammers have available to them, and Rice took to social media after the game to post a photo alongside his three fellow academy graduates.
Here is Rice’s post on Twitter…
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