Tony Carr has seen many young hopefuls pass through in his 39 years on the coaching staff at the academy of football. On 15 February he will oversee West Ham United’s under-18 side in a fifth-round FA Youth Cup tie against Chelsea. The team are not yet on a level with the 1999 class, headed by Joe Cole and Michael Carrick, who won the competition; or the Frank Lampard-Rio Ferdinand crop who lost the 1996 final to Liverpool. But they have a chance, according to Carr.
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An impressive 84 scouts attended the previous round to see a side featuring Daniel Potts, son of the Hammers legend Steve, and Elliot Lee, offspring of the former Newcastle United midfielder Rob, take apart Brighton & Hove Albion 4-1.
Already the 17-year-old Potts, a left-back like his father, and the forward Robert Hall, 18, have made it into Sam Allardyce’s first team. Potts has started three of his four appearances, while Hall has been a replacement on four occasions.
When was the last time Carr’s coaching alchemy transformed two youth-teamers into West Ham senior XI personnel in the same season? “That would be in the Cole and Carrick days, and the Ferdinand and Lampard days,” says Carr, the club’s youth director, who is careful to avoid trite comparisons with those two vintage intakes.
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“We were in the Premier League then and now we’re in the Championship. With respect, it’s a little bit easier to break into the first team as a Championship side.
“No one gets carried away at this stage. It’s when they’ve played 50 games that we think that we’ve done the job.”
Here we see a message to Potts, Hall and their fellow pretenders that they are still a million miles from making it. “Robert Hall and Daniel Potts have done very well and we feel there are a couple of others who in a year or so could break into the first team. We’ve got two other England players in the squad with Matthias Fanimo and Blair Turgott. We’ve also got Leo Chambers, who is the under-17 captain, playing at the back, and Kenzer Lee, a centre-back, so we feel there’s potential.
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