Marco Silva was delighted with teenager Josh King’s ‘character and personality’ after the midfielder made his Fulham debut in last night’s League Cup win at Birmingham City.
The seventeen year-old stitched together an outstanding cameo after replacing fellow debutant Sander Berge for the final 25 minutes of Fulham’s 2-0 win at St. Andrew’s – and was unfortunate not to score in the closing stages when his close range finish was chalked off after Adama Traore had touched the ball out of play.
The Fulham head coach waxed lyrical about King’s potential and his performances over the summer in his interview with FFCTV after the final whistle:
“It is so nice to see him show the character and the personality on the pitch the way he does. It’s so nice to see. It’s not a surprise for us because he has had a brilliant pre-season with us. He had some behind-closed-doors games where he did so, so well. In Portugal, he had some very good moments. In one of the games we played against Hoffenheim, the same thing and it was nice to see him tonight.
He’s going to be like that with us in some games, with the under-21s in the others and work every single day with us. We trust in him and we really believe that he is going to be a top, top player in the future. At the same time, we have to give this type of experience for him because it will help him grow much quicker than not playing in these types of games.
Well I hope you have him signed up nice and securely then and he doesn’t jump ship like so many others that we have let slip through our fingers too easily.
Carvalho and O’ Reilly -to name only two who have each commanded fees circa 25 million in the last week or so.
Mind you, the Marco Silva way of nurturing young players means we can always send him out to League 1 for a season on loan. Then, send him to the Championship for another season on loan. Then, when he has served his apprenticeship, bring him on in the 90th minute of a game when he has no chance of showing his ability, or, when you finally decide to make him a starter, at last, play him out of position on the left wing.
Or am I being too cynical???
Yes your being cynical and you know it
Yet not wholly incorrect.
I was very impressed with him, first time I’d seen him and reminded me of Carvalho and his emergence. I also hope that we can benefit from all the work that goes into these Academy players, preferably on the pitch. We haven’t a good record, as we all know, but sometimes it is just out of the clubs hands.
I think those comments are very harsh on Silva, who wasn’t even at the club when O’Riley was treated terribly by Scott Parker.
He built the Championship side around Carvalho, who probably regrets jumping ship to Liverpool in the manner that he did now. It is insanely difficult to fit teenagers into a newly-promoted Premier League side but he gave minutes to both Stansfield and Luke Harris over the last couple of seasons and they have both benefited from regular football at a lower level.
Silva’s quotes are probably the right approach for a gifted talent like King at this stage. The key – ironically – is to keep progressing in the Cup competitions so that he has more opportunities to impress but unless we sign another midfielder I can see him featuring in more and more matchday squads.
I’m sure there are more leavers to pull to keeping some of our academy products that maybe hitherto haven’t been tried.
Make sure we have him signed to a long contract we can’t let anymore youngsters leave for peanuts.