Laura Woods highlighted West Ham trio Sebastien Haller, Jack Wilshere and Felipe Anderson as players that could help the Hammers succeed the season.
The talkSPORT presenter started hyping up the Hammers’ squad before asking Ray Parlour how he thinks they will fare in the upcoming campaign but the former Arsenal player ended up cutting her off.
“They’ve got Sebastien Haller, who they got for £36million, he looks really positive and then you look at the rest of the team and the players they’ve got, they’ve got Jack Wilshere coming back from injury, Felipe Anderson was brilliant…” said Woods on talkSPORT (9:49am, Monday, July 29th).
Parlour then interrupted her to point out that West Ham also had “Reece Oxford coming back” and then later in the show mentioned the defender once again.
“One player that has mystified me a little bit, I saw him play at the Emirates and he was sensational, now he has come back from a loan deal,” stated Parlour.
OPINION
It seems Parlour is still on some level holding out hope that Oxford will come good for the Hammers. The Arsenal legend clearly hasn’t forgotten how the 20-year-old previously stood for West Ham in the 2-0 victory over Arsenal in 2015 when he was deployed as a midfield enforcer. However, you feel Parlour hasn’t been keeping up with the player’s career as of late, as during recent seasons, it hasn’t exactly gone to plan for him. Oxford spent a lot of his 2017/18 campaign on loan at German club Borussia Monchengladbach, but only managed eight appearances for them. The centre-back then spent the first half of his latest season featuring for the Hammers’ U-23s, he made 13 appearances in the Premier League 2, before joining German side FC Augsburg on loan. It didn’t go spectacularly well for the enforcer once again as well he did make nine appearances, registering one assist in the process, his performances weren’t amazing. Oxford only averaged a rating of 6.16, according to WhoScored, and was part of the side that lost to 8-1 to Wolfsburg on the final day of the season. So with that in mind, it’s unclear why Parlour is namedropping him.
