Flynn Downes interview: I’m living the dream at West Ham but training is a wake-up call

It is fair to say that when Flynn Downes arrived at Swansea in the summer of 2021, he did not expect to find leaving the Welsh club only a year later so difficult.

“I was a bit cautious about going,” he says, before adding, sheepishly: “To be honest, I’d heard Swansea was a bit of a s***hole.”

Things, though, had turned sour at Ipswich, the club Downes joined aged seven, and his development was stalling after being packed off to train with the Under-23s by new manager Paul Cook, with whom he “just didn’t see eye-to-eye”. He needed a way out and found it, by crossing the country and then the Severn, too.

“It was the total opposite to what I’d expected,” Downes tells Standard Sport. “What a lovely place. The people were lovely, the club were so good.

I still can’t get over that I’m here, it’s mad.

“I loved it down there and, I’ll be honest, I wanted to stay. I’d gone from a year at Ipswich where I hated it to literally loving it, so I was all for staying. Then I came back for pre-season and from there I kind of knew I wasn’t going to…”

Long-time admirers Crystal Palace had made a bid and the Championship team had decided to sell. Downes, a year earlier exiled at a League One club, was now heading for the Premier League, but doing so with mixed emotions — until a late twist.

“I went to sleep thinking I was going to do a medical at Crystal Palace,” he says. “I woke up the next morning, went into Swansea, walked into the gaffer’s office and he was like: ‘Look, West Ham have been in contact’.”

Born and raised in Essex, Downes grew up a West Ham fan, his father embarking on the two-hour round trip from Brentwood to Ipswich three times a week for the sake of his son’s footballing dream, which has come full circle more swiftly