Matthew Pennington

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He's a very good young player, who plays great for the U23s, who has excelled on all the occasions he has been loaned out, and who was thrown in at the deep end in arguably the 2 biggest away games of the league season.

He deserves time to develop, he's a promising young lad. People rushing to judge him based on 2 games is completely asinine. There are other players who stink the gaff out for months at a time and don't get nearly the criticism this lad is getting.

If he's not good enough, then neither are the likes of Mori, Jags and Williams, all 3 of which have been rank awful at various times during the season. And I don't mean this to slate those 3, just mentioning it because people rush to judge a young lad based on a couple of games and give others far more experienced a lot more slack. I guess the old cliche about young lads getting it in the neck more than most applies here. Somehow I think if he was some 20 year old Italian defender with an exotic name that we'd signed for £10m, he wouldn't be getting nearly the stick and lot more people would be saying that he needs time to bed in and learn his trade at this level.
 

DerbyshireAndHarper said:
He's a very good young player, who plays great for the U23s, who has excelled on all the occasions he has been loaned out, and who was thrown in at the deep end in arguably the 2 biggest away games of the league season.

He deserves time to develop, he's a promising young lad. People rushing to judge him based on 2 games is completely asinine. There are other players who stink the gaff out for months at a time and don't get nearly the criticism this lad is getting.

If he's not good enough, then neither are the likes of Mori, Jags and Williams, all 3 of which have been rank awful at various times during the season. And I don't mean this to slate those 3, just mentioning it because people rush to judge a young lad based on a couple of games and give others far more experienced a lot more slack. I guess the old cliche about young lads getting it in the neck more than most applies here. Somehow I think if he was some 20 year old Italian defender with an exotic name that we'd signed for £10m, he wouldn't be getting nearly the stick and lot more people would be saying that he needs time to bed in and learn his trade at this level.
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At the age of 22 how much time are we wanting? I'm sorry, but I'm cutting the lad slack because he is local. If he were Italian with no affiliation to the club I'd be saying a lot worse.

Most of the time you can tell with young players how they'll turn out from very early on. Rooney, Barkley, Stones, Davies etc... They had something which stood out from the word go. This lad looked so far out of his depth at Anfield it's difficult to see how he belongs at this level.

We're a good team in one of the best league's in the world. He needs some big performances very quickly to show he's worth persevering with.
 
Out of C Lewin, Pennington, Lookman, Davies, Colgate- we are lucky Davis has emerged as a viable regular first team player. Frankly if we had a good experienced squad we should never have the need to play so many young players and use our first team as a testing ground. Our squad is thin so we were forced to play them all. Hopefully after the summer, if we buy experienced players, we will not need to play any of these (other than bring on in the last parts of games)- Davies is the exception.
 
bluestevon said:
Hard to learn pace and agility though mate, which this lad seems to lack.
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..he actually runs ok with the ball at his feet, it's perhaps sharpness and nippiness he's lacking at this level. It's the guile he will learn, like not getting a yard closer to Coutinho and keeping him on his left. As I've said, he's academically very clever and the coaches obviously believe they have something to work on. Time will tell, Matey. I presume we'll get a better look today, if Vardy plays it'll be a big test.
 
Eggs said:
..he actually runs ok with the ball at his feet, it's perhaps sharpness and nippiness he's lacking at this level. It's the guile he will learn, like not getting a yard closer to Coutinho and keeping him on his left. As I've said, he's academically very clever and the coaches obviously believe they have something to work on. Time will tell, Matey. I presume we'll get a better look today, if Vardy plays it'll be a big test.
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It's good to read a reasoned and considered critique of a young player with a handful of first team games under his belt, as opposed to the histrionic condemnation which seems to dominate. Some peoples determination to dismiss this player out of hand is made more comical by the fact that the manager currently showing faith and patience with him is one of the all time great defenders and is consequently a far more informed judge of Pennington's capability than many on here.
 

Eggs said:
..he actually runs ok with the ball at his feet, it's perhaps sharpness and nippiness he's lacking at this level. It's the guile he will learn, like not getting a yard closer to Coutinho and keeping him on his left. As I've said, he's academically very clever and the coaches obviously believe they have something to work on. Time will tell, Matey. I presume we'll get a better look today, if Vardy plays it'll be a big test.
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I'm Holgate goes to cb today mate, or vardy/musa don't start, fear for us if we start jags and Pennington as cbs
 
bluestevon said:
I'm Holgate goes to cb today mate, or vardy/musa don't start, fear for us if we start jags and Pennington as cbs
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...I know what you mean but Holgate did fine at United and he might not want to change things too much. The other threat is Huth at set pieces, he'll probably allocate Lukaku to mark him rather than one of our CBs.
 
Shame to see the impatient now now now fans stumbling around drunk in this thread.

I have zero clue if he will be good enough for us and can't even say at what level of football he will end up at, but I will allow him a lot more than a couple of feature length movies worth of minutes on the pitch before I'd attempt any kind of judgement.

Silly football fans being silly
 
dannyboy said:
At the age of 22 how much time are we wanting? I'm sorry, but I'm cutting the lad slack because he is local. If he were Italian with no affiliation to the club I'd be saying a lot worse.

Most of the time you can tell with young players how they'll turn out from very early on. Rooney, Barkley, Stones, Davies etc... They had something which stood out from the word go. This lad looked so far out of his depth at Anfield it's difficult to see how he belongs at this level.

We're a good team in one of the best league's in the world. He needs some big performances very quickly to show he's worth persevering with.
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We have literally nobody else at the moment though and while he was targetted in the derby (as was Holgate) he stood up very well at OT and didn't really put a foot wrong.
 

Watched his movement for for Ibrahimovic's 'offside' goal, its absolutely embarrassing and shambolic
 
only just read he got a contract extension yesterday, great news for the lad. Unsworth rates him highly and has nothing but good things to say about the lad so that's good enough for me.

He struggled big time in the Derby, but then so did 2 top professionals in Jagielka and Williams. Even though I thought it was the wrong sub on Tuesday he came on and did everything that was asked of him.

Good luck to him and I hope he makes a positive impression on everyone if he gets game time from now until the end of the season.
 

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