Place and break through barriers to big-time at Hammers

appreciated him being up front with me so I knew exactly where I stood.”

It was the loan to League

One MK Dons for the second part of last season, playing 22 times as they reached the play-offs, that has given Coventry an extra boost during this pre-season with the Hammers.

And if he needed any kind of reminder of the demands that boss David Moyes (right) places on the squad, the pre-season training trips to Evian in France followed by St Andrews in Scotland – just before the 150th Open – provided a helpful jolt.

“The manager tells you how he is feeling all the time,” Coventry said. “If you make 10 great passes but one goes the wrong way, he will let you know because he wants to make you better.

“He wants you to understand the demands that will be on you in every game. No one gets away with not doing their bit.

“We’ve had double sessions in France and it’s been really intense.

“If anyone falls below the standards that the gaffer has set, then they will be told. It doesn’t matter if it is someone the club has paid a lot of money for or someone from the academy like me, they will be told.”

Coventry has been involved in the first team’s pre-season games as both a starter and a substitute but, like last summer, the arrival of a rival in his position – Flynn Downes from Swansea – has put him in a tricky position.

Coventry said: “As much as I would love to play forwest Ham, at the same time I have ambitions to play for Ireland and for that to happen I have to be playing.

“Sometimes you feel so close and then sometimes you feel like it’s so far away from you.”