Why Bring In Young Talent And Not Play Them?

West Ham United have signed 18 year old Montenegro International Sead Haksabanovic on a five year contract for a fee of around £3.5 Million from Swedish club Halmstads BK, is he one of the "ones for the future" Co-Owner David Sullivan hinted at when recently discussing the club's recruitment policy, or is the plan to try and unleash him on teams that have never seen him?.

Haksabanovic was handed his Halmstads debut in 2015 at the age of 15 and the attacking midfielder went on to make 70 appearances in Swedish football virtually keeping the club afloat. Haksabanovic represented Sweden at youth level before switching his allegiance to Montenegro and made his debut for the national side in June, he came on as a substitute in Montenegro's 4-1 World Cup qualifying victory over Armenia.
"I'm really happy to be here , it's a dream come true, West Ham is a big club and it is a nice feeling to have signed, the move happened quite fast, we heard that they wanted me, so I was interested to hear the plan for me and when I did I was very pleased." beamed Haksabanovic to the official www.whufc.com site.

So there we have it, another talented youngster arrives at The London Stadium but what will happen to this obviously gifted player? Well he's not very big! Some might wonder how he would react to the pace and physical demands of the Premiership, others assume he has been brought in as cover for Manu Lanzini in case he gets injured or suspended. The other option is to send him out on loan, but why buy a talented player and send him out on loan before at least giving him a chance to show his worth? It seems that Slaven Billic is keen to retain Toni Martinez, Declan Rice and Nathan Holland from the friendlies for some form of first team duties, will he do the same with Haksabanovic without running the rule over him thoroughly?

When Martin Samuelson first arrived at the club from Manchester City great things were expected of him, and indeed he showed a lot of early promise, but then injury, loss of form and loss of confidence took a massive toll on the lad. It is obvious that West Ham do want to bring Academy players and other youngsters through the ranks, sending prize prospect Reece Oxford out to Germany the club want him to learn freed of British footballing shackles. right from the beginning Slaven Billic was very vocal about protecting and nurturing Oxford. A similar approach seems to be happening with Josh Cullen and Reece Burke.

What confuses a lot of Hammers and indeed a lot of other domestic club's fans is, why do young players arrive at high profile clubs for insane money and play straight away at an age, when domestic teams seem frightened or unwilling to give their young players a similar opportunity?

West Ham United are definitely not Chelsea, and are therefore unable to 'stock pile' young players and send them out on loan, the club has to try and think outside the box, maybe giving youngsters significant cameo appearances but then take them out the firing line for a while, a sort of player guerilla tactic of hit and run. After all it was that element of the unknown and youth that saw the first memorable victory of Billic's first season as manager, away to Arsenal when no one had given West Ham a prayer! - Ed