West Ham haven't given a start to a new homegrown player for FOUR years

A bunch of blokes are arguing about football at Cassettari’s Cafe on Barking Road, E13. Salt and pepper shakers are used as makeshift players, and an ashtray as the ball, but they’ve risked the wrath of the waitress by marking the penalty spot with a blob of mustard.

This is where the search for the origins of West Ham’s ‘Academy of Football’ takes you — to a family-run East End establishment frequented by the then-Second Division team’s players throughout the 1950s where tea and tactics were on the menu.

Broke, manager Ted Fenton realised youth was a must. He tasked Malcolm Allison — his big centre-half with bigger ideas than the WM system that had entered English football — with coaching the schoolboys for 30 shillings a night, every Tuesday and Thursday.

Occasionally, Allison invited the odd worthy youngster to join ‘Cassettari’s Crew’. One of them went by the name of Bobby Moore, taught ‘The West Ham Way’ from this cafe-cum-classroom where the former centre-forward Tommy Dixon even hosted his wedding reception.

West Ham have prided themselves on their reputation for producing starlets ever since — the ‘Academy of Football’ epithet is plastered everywhere you look at their Rush Green training ground — but how truly this represents the core of the club today is questionable.

This month marks four years since a West Ham academy graduate last broke through to start a league game — Jeremy Ngakia in a 2-0 loss to Liverpool at the London Stadium in January 2020.

That is a long time to wait for another breakthrough from a famed talent factory. Too long for a fanbase craving a connection after seeing Ngakia (now of Watford), Grady Diangana (West Brom), Josh Cullen (Burnley), Harrison Ashby (Newcastle, on loan at Swansea), Sonny