Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
This is a simple matter as far as I'm concerned. The club decided that Ajayi wasn't good enough, the large majority of contributors (most of whom had never seen Ajayi play until he after he left us I daresay) to this thread have supported the club's stance, therefore it follows they didn't rate him good enough to play for us.

He left us when he was in his mid twenties having not featured in the first team in a competitive match at all and in the three and a half years since then, he's played nearly one hundred and forty league matches with the large majority of them being at Championship level or higher, while he made his full international debut for Nigeria in 2018 and has bow won thirteen caps for them - I think those stats look terrible from a Cardiff point of view.

You did see Ajayi play for us and I can remember us having conversations about him at reserve games - am I surprised he's playing in the Premier League now and scoring at Anfield? Yes I am, I didn't believe he could reach the stage where he appears to be West Brom's first choice centreback when they are in the top flight. Did I think he could become a good quality Championship player? Yes, definitely because there was always an element to his game which suggested he could make the step up to senior football - when I first saw James Collins playing at centre half, I was struck by his ability to fire beautifully hit, inch perfect, passes to team mates over long distances, Ajayi was able to do this and, increasingly, he was becoming a threat at set pieces at under 23 level (I wasn't surprised at all when Rotherham began to use him as a deep lying midfielder), his defending was a bit raw (he was slightly at fault with Liverpool's goal yesterday), but I thought it was improving during his time with us..

The most any City fans saw of Ajayi was was in his Development team appearances, but staff at the club saw him training every day when he wasn't out on loan to someone else - if, with that extra knowledge, they are genuinely surprised by how Ajayi's career has developed since he left us, then I think their judgement of players cannot be very good.
I'm not sure how starting his first season well in the Premier League is proof that he was good enough to play in our first team four years ago. I explained that he couldn't make Rotherham's team at the end of 2017-18 in League 1 and yet you want to mock those of us who don't realise we should actually have been dropping two of Morrison, Bamba and Manga to make way for him in our promotion team that season.

How should the club have gone about developing him into a first teamer here with those three ahead of him? He was 23, not 18 like Bagan is, so when the chance of regular football came up with Rotherham it's hardly surprising he wanted to move on. How would you have kept him here in that situation? How would you have kept Heaton happy with Marshall ahead of him, how would you have kept McCormack happy with Bothroyd and Chopra ahead of him? These situations arise now and again.

As has been said elsewhere in this thread, every team has let a player go who goes on to be successful elsewhere. Sometimes it's down to a massive mistake, sometimes it's just circumstances. I'd class the Ajayi situation in the latter category.