There has been a tightening up on the rules, but the system does still allow a club to take 4 players from the same club on loan. Mason has become the 4th of our players to go to Swindon. At one point about 3 seasons ago, Ryan Mason was considered one of our better prospects. Like a lot of that group who were around at that time, his career has met a brick wall, not helped in his case by a ludicrous and wasteful loan spell in France. A case could be made for Mason having a better footballing brain than some big name PL players, but he needs more than that now. He has to use this loan to springboard his career, otherwise he is destined to be a lower division footballer.
I think we've had some decent quality youth prospects in recent years and something seems to be preventing them from fulfilling their potential 100%, for some reason. I have no idea what it is. The likes of Mason, Carroll, Caulker, Townsend, Livermore and even a variety of youngsters that we've paid for (Boateng, for example), just never seem to make it. Perhaps it's our lack of stability in both our youth system and our manager/head coach job. The continual pissing about with the DOF role might not have helped, either.
O'Hara, Rose, Kane (dubious, still young) Still, its definitely an improvement. There was a period where there were no prem-class players coming through at all and it was just a barren wasteland other than King
I would say Townsend and Carroll could well make it yet and Caulker's already an important part of our squad. In addition, Walker has made it as has Bale from our youth signings, whilst Rose is threatening to make it too. There's plenty to be cheery about with our current youth players too, I'm sure some of them will be breaking through over the coming years.
Yeah but Boateng was included in PNP's post so I thought it was worth mentioning some of our young signings that have fought their way to being important players at the club.
Luongo's goal was the only one of the game, so SHFC pick up their first points of the campaign. Clean sheet for Hall but Pritchard and Mason both missed out through injury. Not sure about the latter, but the former had a dead leg.
From the local paper: Mason has Grade 1 hamstring tear - out for 10 days to two weeks It's an after-match quote from Mark Cooper.
