Whilst I respect everyone’s opinion on Lewis, I’m yet to be convinced.
Eardley and Toffolo are arguably the best full backs we’ve had in the nigh on 30 years I’ve been going, to predict Lewis has any chance of emulating that based on 4/5 appearances seems a little far fetched.
I’m all for untapped potential, but I’m also conscious of unseen potential. Any player is phenomenal and the next best thing until they’ve played a decent chunk of games!
There is little to be convinced from. He has only played a handful of games.
The only thing for sure is we need to make enough “bets” on potentially good players, so that some/enough of them may come off.
We were sure to have have an excellent right back had we kept Eardley, (and a very solid centre half had we kept Bostwick).
However, we were also sure to have a player that was only likely to be coming ever closer to the end of his career and of little or no value in the transfer market.
If you go back three years you could well argue we would have been in a better position now if instead of buying Bostwick, we had bought Dickie instead of taking on a loan (with a view to buy).
Had we done that we would have been looking to sell a player for a couple of million not letting a 30+ favourite go for nothing.
It’s the plan and a plan is unlikely to succeed if you don’t follow it.
It may fail but the rewards should it succeed would give us an exciting future.
I am a sad as anyone to see Eardley go, your rating of him is spot on.
We are asking Appleton not to turn water into wine but certainly to know how to pick a good bunch of fresh grapes and turn that into wine.
Let’s give him time and hope he can.
