West Ham's Reece Oxford reflects on 'unbelievable' season and targets first-team spot with the Hammers next term

1/12

West Ham's rising star Reece Oxford has labelled his breakthrough campaign at the club as "unbelievable" and admits he wants to be firmly established in the Hammers' first-team next season.

Oxford began the 2015/16 campaign off on a high after he became West Ham's youngest-ever player aged 16 years and 237 days to feature in the Premier League as the Hammers secured a 2-0 away win over Arsenal on the opening day of the season.

After impressing in the game at the Emirates Stadium, Oxford went on to make 12 first-team appearances for Slaven Bilic's side, led the club's Development Squad to the U21 Premier League Cup and was named West Ham's Young Hammer of the Year.

The defender admits his success at West Ham last season was a surprise but revealed his ambition to cement his spot in the Hammers' first-team next term.

Speaking to West Ham's official website, Oxford said: "It’s been unbelievable. I won the Dylan Tombides award last year, so to win the Young Hammer of the Year award is unbelievable. It is a real pleasure.

"I feel like my hard work has paid off now so I’m happy that I have been awarded [the award] by the Club. I didn’t think I’d have moved to where I am now so quickly.

"I did think I was going to push on, but I’m just happy I’m here right now doing what I’m doing. Hopefully I’ll be playing week in, week out [in twelve months’ time]."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in