West Ham United’s Young Player of the Year award will be tough to decide given the lack of youngsters getting a chance this season.
West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic
The Hammers are enduring a dismal second season under Slaven Bilic and will want at least one or two more wins to secure their safety.
The East Londoners have gone five games without a win and have lost three on the bounce to find themselves slipping out of midtable into 12th.
While there are three or four candidates for the prestigious Hammer of the Year award between Winston Reid, Pedro Obiang, Michail Antonio and Manuel Lanzini, deciding the Young Player of the Year is more difficult.
One of the main frustrations for Hammers fans this season has been the lack of first team progress made by their clutch of promising Academy graduates.
Reece Burke, Reece Oxford, Toni Martinez, Domingos Quina and Martin Samuelsen were all expected to kick on this season.
Josh Cullen in action
In reality Josh Cullen, who has been outstanding on loan at Bradford City, has been West Ham’s best young player this season.
But having spent the season with the Bantams he has no first team appearances to speak of for the Hammers besides from an impressive display in the pre-season friendly against Juventus.
Toni Martinez has impressed on loan at Oxford but again he is yet to feature for the first team while Burke and Oxford were both loaned out.
Edimilson Fernandes
It leaves supporters with very few options and the prize will most likely have to go to £5.5million summer signing Edimilson Fernandes, who has comfortably been the club’s best bit of business in the last year.
That defeats the object of the award somewhat, which is usually handed to the most impressive Academy graduate who has progressed into the first team.
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