West Ham United sold Ajibola Alese to Sunderland over the summer and the defender continues to earn rave reviews for the Black Cats.
The Hammers have a long history of promoting young players to their first team ranks.
Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Michael Carrick spring to mind, as do Mark Noble and Declan Rice in more recent times.
Not every young player can reach those levels though and end up having to leave for first-team action elsewhere – such as Grady Diangana and Junior Stanislas.
West Ham United sold Ajibola Alese
One other example is defender Ajibola Alese, who left West Ham for a move to Championship side Sunderland following their promotion from League One.
Alese, 21, came up through the West Ham ranks and earned a professional deal back in 2018.
The 6ft 4in centre back had loans spells with Accrington Stanley and Cambridge United before being sold to Sunderland this summer.
Sunderland paid a fee of around £500,000 for Alese, seemingly backing the youngster to fulfil his potential on Wearside.
Alese may be a centre back by trade but he has now been turned into a left back under new Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray.
That’s where Alese has started his last two games and in the first, he scored in a 2-2 draw at Watford.
Alese started at left back again on Saturday as Sunderland hosted Preston North End and he impressed again.
Ben Whiteman thought he had opened the scoring for Preston but Alese somehow produced a miraculous goal-line clearance.
Sunderland kept a clean sheet as the two sides played out a 0-0 draw and they had Alese to thank for that piece of defensive brilliance.
Alese was then named Man of the Match by former West Ham defender Danny Collins, who was analysing the game for SAFC Live.
It’s early days for Alese’s Sunderland career but it looks like he is making a big impact – and he will look to keep it going as he aims to show that West Ham were wrong for letting him go.
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