West Ham United U18 goalkeeper Sam Howes is looking forward to the Hammers' match with Reading on Saturday morning.
Howes and his teammates are looking for to bounce back and win after losing to Norwich City 2-1 last weekend, their last game of the league season before the Play-Offs begin.
Speaking ahead of the match with the Royals, the shot stopper said: “It’ll be a difficult game, every team is at this level. They’re all good solid teams.
“It’ll be tough but I’m sure all the lads will be up to the task. There’s three valuable points on offer, three that we definitely need.”
Last time the Hammers played Reading, the U18s triumphed 4-0. In an impressive display, the Hammers won convincingly courtesy of goals from Josh Pask, Grady Diangana, Jordan Brown and Oscar Borg.
Howes, who wasn’t involved that day, has played a total of 17 games for the U18s this season, as well as a handful of matches for the U21s.
“I didn’t play in that game, but obviously everyone put in a good performance that day and were rewarded for it. Saturday is going to be a different game.
“We can take confidence from that game but we need to put it to the back of our minds, we can’t go in there thinking we are going to turn them over.”
Looking back at the season as a whole, Howes continued to give his assessment of an overall successful year which has seen several youth prospects make the first team bench as well as several schoolboys play for the U18s and U21s.
“We had a very good first half of the season, the second half was slightly harder. Last weekend was a disappointing result and it didn’t reflect what we’re capable of which is frustrating. Winning on Saturday would be a very good way to end the season and go into the play offs with.
“Everyone has done well this season. The forwards have scored a lot of goals and played well together. But also at the back, the likes of Tunji Akinola has done very well at such a young age, to be fair everyone has pulled their weight at different times in the season.”
West Ham United U18s play Reading on Saturday 28 February, at Rush Green, kick off is 11am. Parking and admission is FREE.