Rotherham United already know their fate for next season but with the last game of the season being at home to Middlesbrough, is it time to ‘blood’ some of the younger players’?
One of Sir Matt Busby’s famous quotes was ‘if you’re good enough, you’re old enough’, which I believe is still on the dressing room wall at Old Trafford.
Is that true?
Most teams have a lot of younger players in their squads but if the team are doing well and there are few injuries and/or suspensions, when are they going to get a chance to play? Some teams (and we all know who they are) have more young players out on loan than they have in their squads at home, which, in my eyes, is never right.
The Millers are a small squad and Ben Wiles has been introduced to the first team and, mostly, when he’s played has done very well. But, with having a small squad, I’d have thought that this season we might have seen a few more of our young lads in the play day squad.
I did think that Goalkeeper Laurence Bilboe might get a chance in the cup games (not that we played many). He has been involved with the first team on a number of occasions on the bench and has been out on loan to National League side Havant and Waterlooville.
Everyone has been bemoaning the fact that we ‘need a striker’ or ‘we need someone to play up next to Smith’. We’ve had injuries to our forwards this season but might Tyrone Lewthwaite have been able to slot in? He has made a couple of appearances on the bench but never made it on the pitch.
We’ve got a couple of young midfielders in Reece McGinley and Jake Southern-Cooper while Joshua Kayode came off the bench in our Football League Trophy games last season against a Manchester City U21 side and Bradford City and has had a spell with Chesterfield this season.
Or do you think it’s too soon to get these young players playing in a league game?
The Premier League has had a number of ‘home grown’ players under the age of twenty-one this season but, as I understand it, not as many as the top leagues in France and Germany – but is that a good thing?
My worry is that if we don’t start to play some of these young lads in league games how are we going to know what they are like, if they can cope, if they are going to make it? I don’t know if they train with the first team at all but if not, I really think they should, surely it can only help them being around first team professional players?
