West Ham defender Reece Oxford has confirmed that he would like to leave the club if he does not get first-team minutes in the near future.
The 19-year-old centre-back has not featured for the senior side since the end of January, instead playing for the Under-23s for the entirety of this season so far.
Oxford has seen players like Declan Rice and Grady Diangana overtake him to break into the first-team, and has now admitted he is not happy with his current situation.
In an interview with The Times, he said: “Things can change round at West Ham in a week. I think Pellegrini believes if you’re training hard you can get in and I look at Grady [Diangana]. He’s kicking on now. I want that to be me.
“But if I’m not playing, I hope West Ham would look kindly on my situation and let me go, because there’s no point being 20 and not around the first team. Hopefully everyone wants me to fulfil the potential they’ve seen.
“The club has done a lot for me. Given me my debut. Made me the player I am. I could never talk down the club. But right now I need to be playing and if West Ham are not playing me, I’ve got to move on and part ways.”
OPINION
While many West Ham fans may look negatively upon this admission from Oxford, the interview as a whole presents a hard-working youngster who is determined to break through at his boyhood club. The 19-year-old has received so much bad press in recent years due to his failure to progress since his debut in 2015, but all that criticism feels rather harsh. Oxford has had some bad luck along the way, and looks to be working extremely hard to get back in contention at the London Stadium. He obviously feels as though he has a better chance of breaking through under Pellegrini as well, which is a good sign. That being said, you would think that an exit is the most likely outcome right now. The Hammers defence looks pretty settled, and the chances of Oxford breaking into that side look low at the moment. As he says, things can change in a week, but he will need things to really go his way for that to happen before January, when an exit suddenly comes onto the cards.