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Thursday was a busy day for Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham United with the fixtures for the 2019/2020 Premier League season being announced.

However, the club also made another announcement on the day which rather slipped under the radar with most of the attention on next campaign’s schedule.

They confirmed in the mid-afternoon that Academy coach Jack Collison had stepped down from his role and left the London Stadium with immediate effect.

The news came right out the blue taking most associated with West Ham by surprise and leaving many members of the Claret & Blue Army disappointed.

And fans were right to be upset by the development as their team had just lost a potential future manager, the first homegrown gaffer of the modern era.

While the official report stated that Collison has left with his family to take up an exciting new coaching opportunity overseas, the BBC revealed that the role is with Major League Soccer outfit Atlanta United in the USA.

The 30-year-old is heavily associated with the Hammers as a product of the famous Academy of Football who graduated into the first team under Alan Curbishley in 2008.

Constantly battling with injuries, Collison would go onto make 121 appearances in central midfield in Claret & Blue, scoring 14 times and assisting on ten occasions.

He was always a fan favourite at the Boleyn Ground, capturing the hearts of fans when he still played in a home London derby against Millwall just days after his father had tragically died in a road accident.

But following the midfielder leaving east London in 2014, injuries eventually took their toll and the persistence was too much for him – he was forced to retire at just 27 whilst with Peterborough United.

Collison was soon offered a role in the Irons academy at Chadwell Heath as an Academy coach, first working as manager of the under-16 side.

In two years, he was able to earn a promotion and start progressing up the ranks as he had done as a young player, ending up as co-manager of the under-18s alongside Mark Philips.

Most recently, the duo led the bright team to a fantastic 2018/2019 campaign in which they so nearly broke into the top six of the Premier League U18 having started off with four consecutive wins.

Whilst it’s nice to see Kevin Keen back at the club replacing Collison as Under 18 coach, one can’t help but feeling what could have been with Collison.

The ex-Welsh international possesses all the right qualities to be a superb West Ham manager, as he’s well-liked around the club and knows it inside-out as one of its sons.

And all the signs were right for the former midfielder to one day, maybe in the near future, take the top job and make the move from Chadwell Heath to Rush Green training ground in Romford.

As someone who knows all too well what football can give you and how quickly it can all be taken away, he would have been a great man-motivator, installing a wonderful philosophy in the first team.

There can be little doubt that Collison would have been given a fond farewell and send off from everyone in east London, but perhaps many of those figures were thinking they should have tried that bit harder to get him stay as he could well be seen as the one that got away in a couple of years’ time.