Jordan Clark getting a Premier League start tonight

Wouldn't of thought helliwell would drop that low down. Thought he looked okay when he featured for us and also surprised we let him go.

 

I worked at BFC when he was in the academy, Man City was sniffing around him for half a million when he was 15. He had buckets of talent and a good head to go with it, I’d have picked him to make the England squad any day over John Stones, who when I was there, wasn’t ever expected to even reach our first team.

Mistakes happen at that age, it’s almost impossible to ever know while their bodies are still growing, and their determination doesn’t ever really become apparent at that age, it starts to change when they sign scholarships etc, but honestly, it’s a really hard gig.

 

Do you think that's why the club are currently sticking longer with Wolfe than others in the past to see how he develops into his 20s?

 

Not necessarily mate no, they were very different times then. We always had a manager, not a head coach. So player negotiations and contract extensions came down solely to the manager, a head coach doesn’t have that right. The club will negotiate with players a new contract who the head coach might not actually fancy that much.

Clarkes times was a funny one, we had robins who had been promised big support in the summer, and a play off push. However let’s say that didn’t happen and we wanted to stay up again, that usually ended up with older heads coming in, IE Jon Macken. Tried and tested, does what it says on the tin. A manager isn’t going to risk his own employment by fielding unproven talent, especially in relegation battles.

nowadays we’ve decided we will push younger players all the way and avoid journeymen… it’s all in the search of big profit. Young lads from the academy are wanted because they haven’t cost you a single penny on your balance sheet, so if you sell one for 3 million quid, that’s 3 million quid profit to file on your FFP books. League 1 isn’t as brutal as the championship, I think if we was a league 1 club during JC’s time with us, I think we would have had a different outcome. We will certainly reap more rewards now the CEO’s look after contracts, they will offer a contract if they see it financially beneficial in the long run. Managers only care about their own position and the here and now.

 

Cheers for the insight there, very interesting.

We'll see how the switch to having a Director of Football works but it seems a positive move to me to maybe blend the newer and older way of doing things and bridge the playing side with making money from sales.