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Morning all, have a good week gents.
Steak nights, table tennis and goals galore: How Moyes got West Ham fit and firing
To highlight how the culture at West Ham United has changed, Declan Rice returned to training five days earlier than scheduled this summer to ensure he was in the best possible shape for pre-season.
The 22-year-old had played a starring role in England reaching the final of the European Championship, which they lost on penalties to Italy on July 11. The midfielder was supposed to then be off for three weeks but, after a 10-day break in Ibiza during which he’d kept up his fitness with regular runs, Rice reported West Ham’s pre-season base at the Pennyhill Park luxury hotel complex, on the south-western outskirts of London, and was soon playing in behind-closed-doors friendlies.
Since returning for a second spell as West Ham manager in December 2019, David Moyes has instilled a strong work ethic in the squad — and players in their under-23 ranks have followed suit.
Striker Mipo Odubeko, for example, chose not to go on holiday this summer and focused instead on improving his fitness with his personal trainers. Jamal Baptiste worked on his aerial ability alongside former West Ham trainee Sam Westley. Baptiste’s hard work has paid off — he scored headers in pre-season friendlies against Dundee and Southend United.
Emmanuel Longelo focused on his free kicks, during and after training. This too had the desired effect, as the full-back put two of them into the net in the 3-0 win over Birmingham City Under-23s earlier this month.
When Moyes returned from his own summer break, players in the under-23s were told to come back two weeks before West Ham’s senior pros to ensure they would be up to speed during sessions.
Baptiste, Nathan Holland, Pierre Ekwah Elimby, Conor Coventry, Xande Silva, Jacob Knightbridge, Frederik Alves, Ajibola Alese, Nathan Trott and Krisztian Hegyi were present during a week-long training camp at the St Andrews golf resort in Scotland. Coventry and Baptiste clearly impressed, as they were both on the new nine-man substitutes’ bench for Sunday’s Premier League opener against Newcastle United.
Early in pre-season, Coventry scored in the 2-1 win at Northampton Town and then the 3-0 victory over Reading. It was not long before his performances caught the attention of Championship side Peterborough United, who enquired about signing the 21-year-old only to be told he was not for sale.
Having helped West Ham secure Europa League group stage qualification last season, some of the established first-team players enjoyed well-earned summer breaks with their loved ones. For example, Pablo Fornals and his partner travelled to his native Spain, Ryan Fredericks went to Cornwall with his, Mark Noble and family travelled to Portugal and Angelo Ogbonna, his partner and two young children travelled home to Italy.
Upon their return, the squad gathered at the Old Course Hotel at St Andrews, which has staged golf’s Open Championship 29 times. It is a location Scotsman Moyes is very familiar with, Manchester City counterpart Pep Guardiola also took his Barcelona squad there for pre-season training camps.
One night during their stay, Moyes took everyone out for steak at a local restaurant. Table tennis competitions were held at the hotel and, during downtime, some of the players went for a swim in the pool or played golf. Others opted for games of FIFA, and players and staff watched the Euros matches together at a local pub.
In the first training session back at the club’s Rush Green base, before Rice’s return, Moyes, in a jocular mood, asked Ryan Fredericks: “How you getting on without Dec?”, to which the full-back replied, “Not well!”
Rice and Fredericks are close friends and it was later at Pennyhill Park where the camaraderie within the group was on full display. In one training drill, Rice tells the videographer to “record this” — for good reason.
The players occasionally do a passing and shooting drill, which has proven very popular. Moyes passes to the player, who has to take one touch before they can shoot. But there’s a catch: failure to score past the goalkeeper means the loser has to collect all the balls, with some players kicking them as far as they can into the trees to make it harder for them. On this occasion, it was Craig Dawson who had the unenviable task.
The logic behind travelling to the luxury hotel in the Surrey countryside, also used as a base by England’s rugby union side, was so the players could have different scenery.
Barring that training camp in Scotland, the squad had been at Rush Green since the start of post-lockdown training in May of last year and had very little time to get away from their training ground. Staff felt it would be best to find somewhere where they could break up the length of pre-season, while also factoring in the returns of Rice, Lukasz Fabianski, Vladimir Coufal, Tomas Soucek and Andriy Yarmolenko from their summer breaks having represented England, Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine respectively at the Euros.
The players had to do double training sessions, one in the morning and the other late in the afternoon. But the benefit of staying at Pennyhill Park meant they could rest in their rooms after lunch before another intense session. They also bonded by using mountain bikes around the 120-acre grounds of the hotel.
The squad have improved massively in terms of their fitness, something Moyes was keen to address when he was reappointed manager, having previously been in charge for the second half of the 2017-18 season. Although details are often confidential, it emerged Soucek ran 13.1km — just over eight miles — in the 2-0 loss at Manchester City in February 2020.
But arguably most impressive has been West Ham’s attacking style of play. In pre-season games against Dundee, Northampton Town, Leyton Orient, Reading, Celtic, Brentford and Atalanta, they scored 14 goals while keeping three clean sheets.
Moyes’ father, David Sr, lives in Glasgow and attended their 6-2 friendly win at Celtic on July 24. Due to travel restrictions, he was not able to attend any fixtures at the London Stadium last season but is hopeful of attending home games again now the COVID-19 rules have eased.
Michail Antonio was one of the standout performers during pre-season and opened his account for the season in the pulsating 4-2 victory at St James’ Park.
In a new interview with Men’s Health magazine, the 31-year-old details his full-body workout, which includes single-leg Romanian deadlifts and jump split squats that have helped strengthen his hamstrings. Meanwhile, Antonio has acquired his Jamaican passport and is due to earn a call-up for World Cup qualifiers early next month against Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica, and is confident the long-haul flights across the Atlantic won’t affect his performances.
With the club yet to sign a forward in this transfer window, Odubeko and Thierry Nevers have been given opportunities to impress for the under-23s and both scored in this week’s emphatic 6-1 win over their Arsenal counterparts. Nevers, also on target in a 4-2 loss to Brighton on Friday night, has scored five goals in five appearances since joining the club from Championship Reading in May. Moyes, goalkeeper Fabianski and assistant Stuart Pearce were in attendance for the thumping win over their London neighbours on Monday night at the London Stadium.
The under-23s train at Rush Green regularly and Moyes’ backroom of Pearce, Billy McKinlay, Paul Nevin, Kevin Nolan and Xavi Valero are well informed and have regular contact with them. It was Valero, the first-team goalkeeping coach, who got 17-year-old Knightbridge to the St Andrews training camp so he could train with Darren Randolph and David Martin.
Whether it’s Rice attempting to better last season’s goalscoring tally of two, Said Benrahma playing with confidence or Fornals and Antonio going on bike rides, the players are constantly motivating each other.
It is no secret West Ham need to make some additions before the window closes at 11pm UK time on August 31, but Moyes has assembled a squad where there is a strong sense of unity. That is something money can’t buy.
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