Morgan Rogers is still very highly rated, it’ll be at least two years before we can judge him. His prem 2 record is good and he’s still just 18. Men’s football takes some getting used to, and the lower leagues will be like nothing he’s played in before.
I agree we need to find a way to keep them, but getting some young kids in our side and having them go on to top clubs would be better than those going to early failing, as that alone strangely supports taking money while your stocks high.
Oh of course, you can't make any sort of informed judgement at the moment, especially at his age. There are signals to follow though and the fact he has gone out on loan at all might not bode well. I've read a few people who follow youth football suggest recently that if a player goes out on loan from a top club, it quite often means they are probably going so with an eye to their eventual sale. Whether that is a true assessment or not I can't be sure and Harvey Elliott at Liverpool (currently on loan at Blackburn) does show It isn't always the case. If you look at Man City's top academy players however, Foden, Harwood-Bellis, Doyle, Delap, Bernabe, Palmer and Felix Nemecha have all been involved in match day squads this year and none of them have had a single loan move in their careers. Compare that to Lucas Nmecha, City sent him on loan at 19 with his stock still quite high but his subsequent struggles suggest Man City knew there was something not quite clicking for him. At 22 he is out playing on loan in Belgium. It's an indicator, rather than a foregone conclusion.
As for how successful I want the likes of Sinclair, Dhanda, Smith, Rogers, Barry and Brown to be, in the main I still subscribe to the view that it is better for us if they flop after jumping too soon. If we can provide evidence that staying at the club provides a better route to pro football than going elsewhere does, then it will be easier to convince players in the future not to leave. Of course, we need to hold our end of the bargain up for that to work.
