View for latest articles - but able to override at page level
This is possible with attached displays. You would create a view with 2 displays: manual and reverse chronological. 

Manual would use a relationship with node's field (entityreference field) that allows to pick releated nodes.

Automated will always select 4 recent articles.

Attach manual to an automated to appear at the top. 

You gonna end up with 4 to 8 articles.

To remove extra nodes from results, implement hook_views_post_execute()