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congratulations to centreback Rollin Menayese who is making his league debut today for Bristol Rovers at Northampton - 0-0 so fsr.
Rovers 5-0 up
Saw this. Have to say I was a bit surprised that we let him go. Always thought that he was one of the stand outs in his age group and had potential because of his physical stature. Sometimes players have to leave and be a bigger fish I suppose. Delighted to see him make it as a pro. Hopefully he can get Welsh recognition at u21 level at some point.
Kind of hope Rovers stay where they are in the league as they are proving to be a great breeding ground for young Welsh talent, particularly those cast off by other academies (mainly ours!)
He'd have been behind Morrison, Bamba, Manga, Connolly and at a pinch Peltier.
It's a position of strength for us - so would have been a case of keeping him around and hoping he could have displaced one of the top three. We're not in a position to do so - wasn't a case he may not have been good enough, just not good enough to displace what we already had.
Definitely not ready for us for sure and I wasn't suggesting he was. Of the crop he was released with, he was the one I was surprised by. Felt he could have been speculated on and loaned out or trained further with the DVP side.
From the player's perspective though, good thing he left. Doing very well at 20.
I just don't think there's much point keeping a player on at 20-21 if they aren't close to "demanding" a place on the bench tbh.
With regards to Menayese, ok, we keep him on - he needed game time above the DVP level. Who could we loan him out to? Nobody was interested other than Weston-super-Mare. At the time, he couldn't get game time in the league structure.
That suggests he just wasn't ready for league football at that point - so do you keep him on and hope? We've historically done that and it's not really helped.
What we really need are younger players to understand they need to push on, they need that hunger. Some get that pro contract and think they've made it. You can only coach players so far, those that really succeed are those with the drive inside them.
Appreciate you're making a wider point however this example has still not reached 20.
Reagon Poole has gone to a club where they started off struggling and new manager hasn't really given him a chance. It's been a tough loan thus far but he left us to a lower league and made his way back - he's got the right character to handle disappointment.
You're making a very good point. At the time he was released with a lot of other youngsters so the club obviously has your argument very much in mind. But I did single him out on the DVP thread at the time as one I thought we should speculate on for longer. It's a good idea to think of the group and the academy as a whole, but I don't think it's a good idea to let players go who might possibly maybe have something.