Academy & U21s

[bluebruce]

24 minutes ago, KentExile said:

Montgomery didn't really play a lot of games or minutes before the summer window opened (featured in 3 games totaling 136 minutes), even then he was sent off in one of those 3 games.

Pratt by a necessity & lack of options, will probably play a fair bit by the time the next window opens.  If hre performs well before January, then other clubs may start to pay more attention to our U21s

Completely agree with the 2nd bold part

It's a very fair point, although I'd say he was seen in the summer window as a squad player and with potential to push on. Squad player in a Championship side so soon after his non league loan still suggests to prospective clubs that we may have some absolutely overqualified players for League Two and National League available. I know National League is also non league, but these days those are pretty much pro teams and the level is decent for academy players so in many cases I'd be happy for young players to go there. It's these tier 7 loans we are so keen on that I really think of as borderline worthless in most cases

But you're absolutely right that it could cement that these players could be ready for higher levels than they're getting. Especially with Montgomery seemingly kicking on more now.

[KentExile]

7 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

It's a very fair point, although I'd say he was seen in the summer window as a squad player and with potential to push on. Squad player in a Championship side so soon after his non league loan still suggests to prospective clubs that we may have some absolutely overqualified players for League Two and National League available. I know National League is also non league, but these days those are pretty much pro teams and the level is decent for academy players so in many cases I'd be happy for young players to go there. It's these tier 7 loans we are so keen on that I really think of as borderline worthless in most cases

But you're absolutely right that it could cement that these players could be ready for higher levels than they're getting. Especially with Montgomery seemingly kicking on more now.

How he was seen here (during the summer) is one thing, how (and how often) he was seen on the pitch by scouts from League 1 & 2 teams is another.

Its not a secret that Rovers cut costs where possible, so the title of "squad player" doesn't mean much, what will matter to scouts /ata analysts etc is performance on the pitch, of which there was not a lot to go on at Championship level

[riverholmes]

5 hours ago, bluebruce said:

I dunno, Montgomery moving rapidly from non league to our first team didn't seem to have any effect. I think we just aren't good at finding loans and have a bit of a bias against our youth players due to not being a Prem side. I feel confident if we went up then the same players would be finding loans in League One and Two more frequently, and if we stayed up a couple years, the Championship.

I get that we may be cautious, though I'm of the opinion we should generally be testing them at the highest level we can find them semi regular football (another issue, not getting game time for them where we do send them...we need to take a leaf out of Prem sides books and slip in some sort of penalty for not playing them, even though it's a system I dislike). Flip side is Olson may be struggling at that level but he may also just not be good enough. Some teams won't play a youth player over their established players they're paying more money for, or their own youth. If there is a penalty then they will only do that if the player truly isn't good enough, then we learn something about them.

 

Montgomery has it all to prove. He had a decent game at right back and he was being talked of as the replacement for Callum Brittain. I doubt we'll see him at right back much going forward. If he makes it as a DM, fair enough but I think he'll be a very limited squad player in this new degraded era.