West Ham United U21 chief Nick Haycock has revealed they've been lobbying to enter a team in the Conference.

Haycock says English football needs to shake up the development pyramid.

He told whufc.com: "We have been saying at meetings with the Premier League in recent months that we would like to put a team to compete in the Conference to give the boys the opportunity of playing for points. It showed [on Monday] that we'd be capable of doing that, or maybe even higher than that.

"It's something that English football probably needs to look at. The Development league is good but that next step at the age of 20 or 21, if you cannot make the first team because the average age is going up because of the money in the game, it's something most definitely worth considering,"