West Ham Weekly Loan Watch

Welcome back, Hammers. We know, we know. You’ve missed us. There’s no excuse. Maybe we should stop calling this the weekly loan watch. Anyway, we’re sure you’ve read all about our loanees from the West Ham United official site who switched their “loanee roundup” article title to “loan watch” to further push our independent site down into the mire, but it’s all good (shots fired). We’ll keep chugging along. So let’s hop right into it.

Reece Burke

Burke has been consistently killing it at Bolton since our last update. His loanee counterpart Josh Cullen has returned to West Ham to play for the PL2 side after not getting enough time to develop at Bolton, but most recently Burke started an unfamiliar position at CDM and did well to secure a point.

Between Declan Rice and Reece Burke, West Ham has two extremely talented, versatile, and — maybe most importantly — young defenders on their books.

Toni Martinez

Toni has played twice for Spanish side Real Valladolid, and got his first start most recently to the tune of a 1-0 score. But then he got subbed out and his squad ended up losing 2-1 to Cordoba. Now, I’m not saying Toni was the difference maker, I’m just saying that maybe next time he should play all 90 minutes. Just a thought.

Reece Oxford

Reece Oxford was out with a foot/ankle injury for a couple months and was in London for the holidays, but he returned to the German side Borussia Mönchengladbach in January. He’s back and running on all cylinders after starting his last two matches for the squad now. First to a tough 1-0 loss, and most recently to a 1-0 victory ending a four-match losing streak for Gladbach.

Very proud to see our man doing well in the Bundesliga where the competition is some of the toughest outside of the Premier League. Some of the PL’s best current defensive stalwarts were groomed in the Bundesliga, so don’t say we didn’t warn you when Oxford comes back and tears it up in the claret and blue next season (hopefully).

Robert Snodgrass

Snodgrass has contributed seven goals and ten assists this season at Aston Villa. We at least know that Snoddy is a good Championship player. Or, maybe, Bilic was wrong and played Snodgrass in the wrong position and now that he’s in the right one he’s flourishing. Who really knows, right? We’ll just stick with the assumption that he’s a very good Championship player so that we don’t start to wish he were in the claret and blue again. The correct claret and blue that is.

We can at least admit that we miss the cheekiness on social media. . . even if he’s still unable to nail down that whole elementary your/you’re grammatical difference.

Martin Samuelsen

Don’t think we’d forget about the young Norwegian Messi. Samuelsen has started six matches for Championship side Burton Albion since joining in January, and apparently he’s doing very well!

Samuelsen is doing so well in fact that some teams are lining up to sign him in the summer, most notable being Leeds United.

The three of six matches that Samuelsen has played all 90 minutes, Burton Albion hasn’t lost. Maybe he should always play the full 90. Once again. . . just a thought.

DID NOT PLAY:

Moses Makasi