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Excellent again tonight against Man City.
Never got a start for us. Let him go on a Free Transfer.
Hard to fathom.
Brought in by Slade for nothing, let go on a free by Warnock.
Peltier also got on tonight.
It's not that hard to fathom really, was well down the pecking order and not ready at the time.
His first team experience at Rotherham played a massive part in his development.
All hindsight.
Or he didn't want to sign a new deal. He was 23 for crying out loud. 100 games later he made it back to the level we were at. He needed to put down some proper roots. Ajayi is probably a good Championship defender but let's keep some perspective. We didn't release Maldini. Good for Ajayi but let's not forget what happened in 17/18, the season after he left. Would we have loaned him out again in 18/19?
Ajayi was 24 when he left us and three years later he's playing in the Premier League. I honestly don't think that there are many other clubs besides Cardiff City who would deem a player "not ready" in their mid twenties - maybe if we'd have been bold enough to give him a chance just before he left, he could have established himself and put himself in the running to be our Young Player of the season in 2018?
West Brom have conceded the most goals in the Premier League this season.
Because one of those four hardly played for us again, another one left a year later and another one was getting towards his mid thirties - with a different approach and a little foresight from City, he would, surely, have been happy to stay rather than go to Rotherham.
Fourth choice with a good chance of being second choice a year later - there was always a good chance that Bruno, who was thirty himself by then, would be moving on soon and Bamba was at an age where his performance levels could decline quickly. Truth is though, I was daft to mention "foresight" because City have proved over a period of years that they don't do foresight.
He had loans first at league 2 level, then league one, then at championship level
After leaving us he briefly dipped back to league 1 and then has done very well at championship level and now is a premier league player. Early in his career he had a reputation for looking commanding , but dropping the occasional clanger. But Rotherham persisted with him and with experience he's become quite the player.
I can't understand why he's made it to the premier league and none of the players we've loaned to Weston Super Mare have made it yet?
Can anyone help?
At the end of the 14/15 season we had Ajayi at the club in desperate need for some first team action, a run of games at the end of the season where we had literally nothing to play for and we chose to play Danny Gabbidon, who was going to be out of contract a few weeks later. We also played Gabbidon in the league cup and Ajayi was on the bench.
We've needed a better approach to bringing youngsters through for years.
Did I think Ajayi would be playing in the Premier League within three years? No I didn't. Did I think that he was someone who could do a job for us based on what I had seen of him in what I would guess would be around twenty appearances for our under 23s? Yes I did. All four of those centrebacks you mentioned were thirty plus or getting fairly close to that age and so it was clear that a degree of rebuilding would need to be carried out in that position.
Ajayi's subsequent career proves I was underestimating him when I thought of him as only a potential Championship player, but, more important than that, our manager at the time didn't rate him that highly - if he had done, there wouldn't have been any need to have spent all of those millions on Aden Flint.