toffeeblue9
Player Valuation: £35m
I've posted a variation on this before.
Whatever the particulars of this loan with Nkonkou or this club, this is a situation - managing the growth of a young player on the cusp of a first-team role - that we've managed poorly recently.
I get the problem - do you have the player stay with the club, train with the first team, but only get limited minutes, or do you play him with the U23s which is crap competition, or do you loan him out, where he may or may not get good experience, and becomes unavailable if needed at our club.
It's tough, but if you look at the failures - Vlasic, Lookman, Kean, Small - we're not getting either good first teamers and we're not getting the value in sale that we could be.
Granted we managed the transition with DCL and Holgate and seem to be on the verge of doing it ok with Branthwaite and Gordon, but I just get a bad feeling that Nkonkou is neither going to play real first team minutes nor be sold for value.
To be fair, transitioning players from your youth team into the first team is a real problem if you're trying to compete at the top end of the league. Only the really outstanding ones go straight into the team.
If you look at Chelsea, they have Mason Mount, Reece James and Calum Hudson-Odoi all in or around the first team reckoning. James and Mount had to go out on loan before they were trusted as first team ready. CHO was integrated straight into the 1st team picture, but ironically isn't as close to the 1st XI as those other two.
I don't think it's an exact science, but clearly all players need proper first team football of some sort to develop. The fact we've loaned out Nkounkou says to me that we acknowledge that his minutes here would be v limited because of the presence of Digne but he needs them to kick on. Whether he comes back after this loan and is able to challenge for a more regular spot in the team, I don't know. He has a lot going for him - pace, a really good delivery and a willingness to get forward. He seems to have an awful lot to learn on the defensive side of the game, but perhaps that's not unexpected given he came here directly from Marseille's youth team, had never played any 1st team football and was a winger until a couple of years ago. Whether he eventually competes for a place in our team or not, I don't think loaning him out was necessarily the wrong thing to do, but I do think that not signing a different left back on loan to cover Digne this season was potentially a mistake.
There will be similar conversations to be had in the coming weeks/months about Gordon, Branthwaite, Simms and possibly Dobbin. They'll not gain much from not playing competitive games, so a January loan might be in our interests for at least Gordon, Branthwaite and Simms, all of whom have already been exposed to first team football at some level.