West Ham's Reece Oxford wants first-team assurances with Slaven Bilic set to unveil new signings in Europa League

1/15
Ken Dyer28 July 2016

West Ham will parade their new signings on Thursday evening, but home-grown teenager Reece Oxford will also be the centre of much attention.

The defender joined West Ham’s pre-season training camp in Austria after playing for England in the European Under-19 Championships and is expected to feature in the Europa League third qualifying round tie against NK Domzale in Slovenia.

Oxford, who became the second youngest player to be involved in a Premier League match when he started the opening game of last season at Arsenal, will be looking to impress the West Ham manager.

The 17-year-old’s future remains uncertain following interest from several clubs in recent weeks, including Manchester United.

West Ham valued him at £18million but ideally want to keep him. Oxford, meanwhile, is looking for assurances on greater first-team involvement, particularly with the vacuum caused by central defender James Tomkins’ £10m move to Crystal Palace.

Norwegian Havard Nordtveit, a free transfer this summer from Borussia Monchengladbach, is expected to fill one of the central defensive positions against NK Domzale as James Collins and Angelo Ogbonna remain unavailable following their involvement in the Euros.

Algeria winger Sofiane Feghouli is expected to start in this first leg while Gokhan Tore, on loan from Besiktas, will also be involved.

But Dimitri Payet misses the game as he is in the early stages of pre-season training following the Euros.

West Ham striker search: The Hammers summer transfer targets

1/15

Aaron Cresswell is also out with a lengthy knee injury while Manuel Lanzini is returning to the club for treatment after being ruled out of the Argentina squad for the Olympics.

With Domzale’s stadium ruled inadequate, tonight’s match has been moved to the Stozice Stadium in Ljubljana, which has a capacity of just over 16,000 fans.

West Ham boss Slaven Bilic admitted that the Europa League “damages your chances in the Premier League” but added: “We want to try, we want to take that risk and hopefully we are going to manage it.”

Bilic has been pleased with his summer additions, saying: “We didn’t buy just for the sake of it. We wanted to buy quality.”

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