Kevin Nolan suggests West Ham players have been unfairly overlooked by England for years

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The former Hammers captain never represented the Three Lions in his career.

Former West Ham United captain Kevin Nolan has told the club’s official website that he believes the club’s English stars have been unfairly overlooked for national team duty for years, and insists that the current crop could be stronger than ever.

Despite boasting talent such as Mark Noble, Andy Carroll, Aaron Cresswell, and Michail Antonio and enjoying a successful season last term, not a single Hammer was called up to Roy Hodgson’s Euro 2016 squad this summer.

Antonio has since been rewarded with a maiden call-up by former Irons boss Sam Allardyce, but West Ham continue to be poorly represented in the Three Lions squad.

Nolan himself never won a senior England cap despite once being touted as one of the best of a new generation of homegrown midfielders during his time at Bolton.

The former Hammers captain believes that more players from the East London club should be handed international opportunities, and suggested that if they replicate the form they produced last term then Allardyce will struggle to avoid calling up more stars from the London Stadium.

Nolan told the club’s website: “I don’t want to say anything bad about the Football Association but we did really well for a number of years with a number of English players and only Scott Parker and Matthew Upson got a call-up to the England squad.

“A lot more of our English players should have been called up because they performed really well. We have now got Andy Carroll, Mark Noble, Aaron Cresswell and obviously Michail Antonio received his first call-up last week.

“It is exciting times for those boys because if Nobes has another season like the one he produced last year and they will definitely have a chance of also breaking into the set-up under Sam.”

West Ham have made a poor start to the season, being knocked out of the Europa League play-off round by Astra Giurgiu and losing three of their first four Premier League games.