Chadwell Chatter

Elliot Lee becomes the latest Hammers player to blog for whufc.com having enjoyed a fantastic week, which has involved a Premier League debut, a hat-trick for the U21s and an appearance in Spain against Espanyol.

It was a great week for me, even going back to ten days ago I was on the bench in the Capital One Cup and to then go on and make my Barclays Premier League debut, before scoring a hat-trick for the Under-21s and now go on the first team's trip to Spain has been fantastic.

Last Saturday I wasn't even meant to be in the squad, we were training at the Boleyn Ground on Friday and Joe Cole picked up an injury. I got put in the squad, then I found out I was on the bench and that's how it happens in football. You've got to take your opportunities when they come and I was very happy to get on last weekend.

I'd have preferred it if we were 3-0 up when I came on obviously, but sometimes you have to come on like that, and it would have taken either being 3-0 to us or 1-0 down for me to come on.

Hopefully I can now make more appearances in the future, and hopefully by throwing me on in that situation, the gaffer thinks he can trust me in that situation. I've shown in the Under-21s that I'm scoring goals, so it's nice to think that he might think of me in that way.

Then I went up to Newcastle to play for the Under-21s and it was a crazy game, unlike any other I've been involved in.

We were 3-0 down after 15 minutes and I hadn't touched the ball, but the lads came back and won 5-4, so it shows the great team spirit we have.

We set ourselves a target, with the Under-21s, to have ten points from the first five games. We're on nine with one to go, but really we should be on ten, if not twelve now, because we just had one bad half against Tottenham, which killed us in that one.

It's a break for us this weekend, but we're back on it when we play Manchester City next Friday and hopefully we can get another three points.

The Under-21s are a close-knit group of players and we push each other on, so to see the likes of Leo Chambers, Pelly Ruddock, Sebastian Lletget and myself get a chance with the first team recently encourages everyone else and encourages us even more to keep on going.

Whilst we've been in Barcelona we had a little downtime on Thursday morning, so I went along with some of the players and staff to visit the Nou Camp.

It was great to visit Barcelona's stadium - the size of it just surprised me, I didn't think it would be that big and the fans are right on top of you.

It must be an amazing atmosphere to play in those circumstances, just standing there and looking down on the pitch was amazing, and makes you think that hopefully one day you might be able to play on that pitch.

Come on you Irons!

Elliot