davidjenkin
Well-known Exeweb poster
[/QUOTE]But doesn't Nicholls form prove the point about introducing players carefully and slowly most of the time? I'm afraid I don't agree that 18-20-year olds are all fully grown men with fully formed temperaments who can be treated in exactly the same way as experienced players - it depends on the individual player. Just looking at my 17 and 18 year-old niece and nephew and their friends of ages ranging anywhere up to 20/21 shows me that some people of that age are very mature adults with the strength to handle many things, while a few are very childlike in many ways.
Footballers are no exception - for every preternatural young talent like George there are many more who need careful handling in case their confidence is destroyed by playing them in situations they might not be ready to handle. Gosling is a case in point - a decent player, but who I recall struggling terribly in a game where it was plain for anyone close to the pitch to see that he was suffering more and more distress and that the confidence was draining out of him by by the second. Eventually Tisdale had to take him off (and IIRC was criticised by the usual suspects for doing so). Of course it often tends to be the most talented players who are the most self-assured - when you have the ability Grimes seems to have it is obviously easier to be confident and so the way he struts around the pitch is hardly a surprise.
EDIT: I was at Accrington, and I hope the 100 or so others who made it too would agree with me that if there were any doubts whatsoever that our younger players are not man enough for the job, this game makes a mockery of that. Horrendous wind blowing to corner flag, heavy drizzle and rain for an hour, a physical Stanley side who like aerial football, a pig of a pitch, and they were again the best players on the field. So please, please, please, no more crap about them needing to be protected from the mean old wolf that is football
They're not made of china Jabba, if they have a bad game they learn from it - same as any other footballer. You never stop learning. You don't see other teams holding back on their bright prospects - Everton with Barkley and the likes and a certain Mr Rooney, Liverpool with Flanaghan and Sterling among many others, Man Utd with Januzaj - and that's asking them to deal with the premiership and media associated with it. All this talk of ushering them in slowly is fine if they turn out for us and are very clearly an unpolished diamond, but when they come and make our senior players look ****e in comparison, the argument doesn't hold for me. Every player of every age has confidence issues from time to time and why wouldn't they?