by Hendo »
29 Aug 2022 10:25
Snowflake Royal Hendo Snowflake Royal Leave on a free iirc.
Him and Dickie were so obviously class as well.
Not really sure how you can judge how class they were, seeing as they made 1 professional appearance for the club between them.
As with Antonio, they don't become they players they are if they're kept here and play bit parts behind more senior defenders. They've grown as footballers because they've had regular playing time at a lower level and from that experience and development are now at a level where they would be first choice for us.
They don't get that if they stay here.
Sometimes you just have to admit it is the right player at the wrong time.
Because I also saw them play a bunch of youth football.
Antonio is a completely different scenario. He got chances in the first team, and he wasn’t up to it at that time, he came from the lower leagues so was very raw, he was up against quality competition and then we got promoted.
When Dickie and Hyam left, and Cooper and Stacey, we didn't get promoted, we were struggling financially, we kept spending loads on mediocrity and we had holes in the squad.
Take Dickie and Stacey and compare with Holmes and McIntyre for example. The Toms have got a lot of their performances breaking through out of position at fullback. We could easily have offered that route to Dickie or Stacey as RB cover as we had few options there at the time.
We spent millions on Blackett and Illori.
Yes, they got where they are by playing. But there was room for them to play for us.
Fact is, I said it at the time for Dickie, Hyam and Stacey, and I've been proved right on all three cases.
Find it hard to take watching youth football and being able to compare that to mens professional football. The list of players who have looked good at youth level and not made the step up, must be incredibly long. Standouts for Reading off the top of my head:
Kuhl
Kelly
Loader
Barret
Davies
Taylor
There may have been a route for them in the first team, but they would've still been very bit-part players, not playing week in, week out as they were when dropping down a level.
Who knows how that could've impacted on their development, but I would lean more towards them getting regular game time as being a huge contributing factor for where they are now.
Think this will also apply more to defenders than forwards as a young defender, who will naturally make mistakes, is going to be chastised for it at a club looking to progress to the Premier League, see Cooper as an example. There isn't as much pressure on them at a lower level, where a) mistakes may not get punished with as much regularity b) mistakes can be more forgiven.
Managers will pretty much always try to bring in more experienced players than playing un-tried youth players, if they're able to. Obviously there are exceptions to that when you have someone as talented as Olise and it is painfully obvious he is ready to make the step up.
Other thing to note is that this will happen to loads and loads of clubs up and down the country, it is not something which is exclusive to Reading. It does make me laugh when people slag the club off like it is something which only we're getting wrong.
Well done on being proved right, good for you.