West Ham picked up their hideous form from last season at Old Trafford yesterday, and were thumped 4-0 by Manchester United. While United fans have cooed over the performances of Matic, Lukaku, and Pogba, West Ham fans found little solace in another meek surrender.
There was one bright spot for West Ham fans: the performance of one Declan Rice.
Rice primarily plays at centre-back, and was voted Ireland's best player at Under-17 level last March. From there, he made his Premier League debut with West Ham, and was called into the senior Irish set up for the training camp in Fota in May, which began the lead-in to the critical World Cup qualifier with Austria.
Encouragingly, Declan Rice has evidently built on the end to last season over the summer, and was called on by Slaven Billic in the second-half of yesterday's game. He replaced Mark Noble with thirty minutes to go, and while he couldn't plug all of the (many) gaps in the West Ham team, his performance did offer West Ham fans some succour:
So happy to see young @_DeclanRice coming on at Old Trafford. Shows that dreams come true. This has literally made my day!! Congrats mate 👏👏
— Michael Beale (@MichaelBeale) August 13, 2017
I like what I've seen in 25mins of Declan Rice
— Ian Abrahams (Moose) (@BroadcastMoose) August 13, 2017
Impressed with this lad when he came on yesterday. Composed passer and good positionally.
— Gareth Cooper (@ThatGarateyjc) August 14, 2017
@_DeclanRice congrats on the performance yesterday big man, future star, future captain.
— 💸 (@whxfc) August 14, 2017
Need to see Declan Rice starting some games this season, bossed it all pre season and was immense when he come on vs United yesterday
— Kai ⚒ (@_Grimwood99) August 14, 2017
Even England's Brave John Terry is a fan:
Is he unfortunate not to make the provisional Irish squad for the upcoming qualifiers?
