What a farce, the club is obsessed with holding onto "young" players. It's not good for the player or the club. This lad has to be on at least £15k a week, if not more. That's over £750k a year, now what club in the Championship is gonna pay more than £750k for a 25 year old forward, with one year left on his contract who even if he plays every single game this season for Wigan will have less than 100 appearences in his whole career. That's a goalkeeper statistic ffs.
It's literally losing money for the absolute sake of it. He'd have to tear up the Championship to get anything close to value on what we've paid him and if he was good enough to do that he'd be staying with us and we wouldn't be after a forward from Coventry who's younger that did just that last season. £15k a week won't bankrupt the club but this is pure textbook Kenwright, give the "young blues" deals well past their sell by date for sentimental reasons.
I'm sure the players will be happy with the money but they have absolutely no careers to look back on afterward. Luke Garbutt is a prime example of this, promising young player that could've probably been playing at a decent level throughout his career and might've made a Premier League squad at some point if he left us at 21 or 22, he's just completed his first full season of regular football at a permanent club with Blackpool in League One at age 29. Antonee Robinson on the other hand left at 21 or something, played in the Championship for a few years and is now a Premier League regular with Fulham, he might even make it back to Everton one day. Both players were rated but everyone knows Garbutt seemed destined for great things, it didn't work out but we kept giving him contracts and he'll likely finish his career having done nothing. Robinson on the other hand will now become at least a lower level PL / Top Championship player playing internationally and will make more money because of it.
Despite the optics of it by the club giving these "young" players consective deals that they haven't earned and don't deserve is a detriment to every single party involved. They need to be let go to have their own careers ffs. I could care less about trying to make a few hundred grand off of a young player, if there wasn't a single youth player that couldn't get into the side regularly aside from Gordon last year they're clearly not good enough, no amount of more money time and effort spent will make a player that's already 21+ good enough for us. Let them go!
