Just listening to the Second Tier podcast where the two presenters are selecting their key players for each team (they went for Colwill and Sawyers for City), but I was surprised to hear one of them pick Tommy Doyle for Sheffield United. They were also raving about him being one of the best summer signings in the whole division on the back of how good he was for City, my question is was he really that good for us?

I’d definitely say he improved our midfield and gave it some of the dynamism it was lacking and his attitude was spot on. He also scored a couple of nice goals which suggested he could get quite a few more in a side that created more chances. This is something which makes it hard to gauge how good a young player who has been in our team in the last few seasons might be - given the serious limitations of many of our players, you’d have had to be something really special to have stood out in our team.

Nevertheless, I felt a tiny bit disappointed with Doyle by the time he left us because there were games where he made little contribution, his form seemed to fade as his spell with us went on and, frankly, his much heralded dead ball deliveru was pretty poor throughout.

I appreciate a lot of what he went through in the last few months of the season was new to him and I shouldn’t lose sight of how young he is still - I’d have him back here like a shot and I’m sure he’ll play plenty of Premier League football in his career, but, as I said before, I had that slight feeling of disappointment about him at the of his time here.