by KenH » Mon Aug 19, 2024 10:27 am
I trust Derek to bring in younger players as and when they're ready. "Proper" league football is a completely different thing to academy/youth games. Players like Fairclough and Fox-Akinde may be "technically" ready, but not enough real game experience to cope with experienced/physical sides they'll be up against in L2. They'll also be inexperienced in that they'll have been playing mostly with the same peer group and need to gain more experience playing alongside older/experienced players.
We saw with Jimbo a couple of times when he brought in youth players, and two of them were sent off on their first team debuts! Just too much pressure. Then Jim/Derek did a much better job with Carlos - another "unfinished" product, but Jim didn't play him much, just let him develop around the first team training, was very careful which games he was played in etc., and then thrown in at the deep end when he was deemed ready. Just like Derek did with Adam Mayor. We also have to remember Leif Davis who I don't think ever actually played for our first team but was sold for quite a lot of money to Leeds. There were reasons why such a gifted/talented player never made our first team.
We really have to trust Derek, Drummy, and all the other academy/coaching staff. They know what they're doing. Fairclough is either deemed "not ready" for regular first team, or they've decided it's better to try to sell him. Let's face it, if he'd been on the bench on Saturday, he wouldn't have been playing in this weekend's youth team to score his injury time winner - he'd probably not have got off the bench, so completely wasted weekend for him. By contrast, he played and scored which will have given him experience, confidence and maybe even put him in the shop window!