Loan spells in store for Boro youngsters
MIDDLESBROUGH will be looking to loan out the majority of the younger players involved in the Carabao Cup defeat to Barnsley this season to aid their development into senior footballers.
Despite losing to the Tykes at the Riverside, the youngsters on show did their prospects no harm in a solid display which saw Boro dominate the game without putting their opponents to bed.
Barnsley then scored a winner in stoppage time against the run of play to send Boro out of a cup competition which was never a priority for them this season.
With that in mind, manager Chris Wilder was full of positives and praise after the match as he talked up the potential of the seven under21 players on show in the game with three more on the bench.
The Teessiders have a fantastic record of bringing through academy players into the first team and the boss wants that to continue in the future.
While he is honest that, providing things go to plan this month and Boro get the five signings he wants, those ten young players will not have any first-team prospects in the current season, some could in the future - meaning the onus this term is on getting many of them out on loan and playing regular games lower down the pyramid.
Wilder said after the Barnsley game: “The young boys will not be part of the first-team squad this season.
“We are talking about Championship football and these young boys need to go out and learn.
“Some will stay in and develop through training with and being coached by us here.
“Some need the hurly-burly and the exposure of playing League One and League Two football for their development.
“We will keep working away. I have set a number in terms of what we’re still hoping to get in and I’m confident we will get it.
“If we don’t we’ll assess of the back of that.
“Yes, Barnsley made changes too, let’s be real about that, but it was still a competitive side which came here wanting to win and it provided a real good test for those young players out there and I have to say I really enjoyed watching them.
“I think the majority, if not all the
Middlesbrough crowd, enjoyed watching them too.
“You could sense and feel the buzz when young Finchy got on the ball or when Bilongo came on or Dodds went charging through.
“They know what they like and they like to see young academy boys coming through. So that for us is a real plus point.”
Despite spending only one of the last 14 seasons in the Premier League, Boro continue to run at a category one academy level in the elite player performance programme – the top level an academy can be at.
It is a status which has just been confirmed, with the cost of running an academy to such a level estimated to be around a minimum of £5 million a year.
The benefits to the club of doing so over the years have been evident in the alumni of players who have graduated from the academy at Rockliffe to forge careers in the game, either at Middlesbrough or elsewhere.
Just this summer the club have received more than £20 million in transfer fees, with potential add-ons on top, by selling two stars to graduate from their youth teams in recent years in Djed Spence and Marcus Tavernier.
On the benefits and hopes for the academy, Wilder continued: “We’re developers of players. We’ve just put £4-5 million in the academy, and the owner has done that for quite a lot of years. The club has had the benefits of it through developing players through into the first team and we will continue doing that.
“When you’re doing that and trying to develop players, sometimes you have to look a little deeper than a result.
“The club did that fabulously before I came in and then since I’ve come we’ve developed Tav, Isaiah Jones, plus the likes of Finch - these are going to be good players.
“I’m not saying all of the players out there will go on to play regular first-team football at Middlesbrough but some will and I would like to, and my coaching staff would like to, keep working with talented young players, and I’m sure we will do.”
Wilder added: “I think you understand as well there is a structure and a style to how we play. It’s not just go out and play. We are teachers and coaches as well.
“We want to teach and coach those young players to get better. I don’t think any of them should lie in bed tonight and think: ‘Dear me, that was a disappointing night for us.’ There is a lot for them young boys to be proud of.”
While it is clear Joe Gibson, Hayden Hackney and Caolan Boyd-Munce, who have played plenty of under-21 - or 23s as it was until a revamp this summer - in recent years will benefit from loan spells slightly lower down the pyramid this season, there are others who will benefit from staying at the club and being around the Boro first-team, much like was the case for Josh Coburn last term.
Young Sonny Finch, who started up front against Barnsley, fits into that bracket.
He only turned 17 last Friday and signed his first professional deal with the club the day before making the first-team bench at QPR 24 hours later for the first time.
He then made his debut against Barnsley and was bright in patches, building on an impressive summer with the first-team squad.
Finch is one player who will stay on Teesside this season, with Wilder confirming: “He’s not even ready for loan football at this stage of his young career.”