West Ham are planning to listen to loan offers for attacker Nathan Holland, according to Football Insider.
The trusted football outlet claim that the 21-year-old winger is likely to be loaned out in January despite featuring for the first-team in the 4-0 loss to Oxford United.
Football Insider report that the Hammers’ coaching staff do not believe Holland is quite ready to challenge for a first-team place and believe his development will be aided by going off to pick up first-team experience elsewhere.
OPINION
This isn’t an overly shocking decision by the Hammers as Holland clearly needs to regularly experience senior football in order to take his development to the next stage. However given that the Hammers have experienced wingers such as Robert Snodgrass struggling for game time with the talented Felipe Anderson and Andriy Yarmolenko the club’s current first-choice options, it doesn’t seem likely there will be many chances coming Holland’s way. This is especially the case when you consider the Hammers are out of the EFL Cup, and are unlikely to risk unproven youngsters in the Premier League as that could backfire. Holland did impress in the 4-0 win against Oxford as he did manage to make two key passes, no Hammer made more, and did manage to have two shots at goal, which at least shows he was getting in promising positions. (Source: WhoScored) While that display wasn’t enough to make Pellegrini suddenly rate him about his proven wingers, it likely will help attract lower-league clubs to his services, especially when you also consider Holland has been lighting it up for the U-23s also this season. The 21-year-old has been so impressive for the youth team, that many West Ham fans have used to Twitter in order to urge him to be thrown in the club’s first-team.
