That’s a concern. Someone so young should have more than some hair. There might be a hidden health or development problem, maybe hormonal.
Plays the same way. Run left and cross it.
We can and should do better.
Unfortunately he will only be able to play for us in 2027 as he is still 17 but in the meantime he is staying with his current club in Colombia until then.
Is Hughes doing this stuff or Inglethorpe. I was thinking this when we brought those young defenders in.
Perhaps both? Doesnt surprise me if we are trying to build up a team for the future below the first team - to give more depth as they develop and reduce fees going out the door when the current rebuild is nearly done.
One thing we havent achieved under FSG yet is that feeling of having a pipeline of talent coming through. This maybe Hughes trying to address that?
I’d like to see a pipeline of local lads being recruited and pushing for first team action. If City can do it why can’t we? Instead we buy kids from abroad, just like Chelsea.
Chelsea bring through a number of local lads too.
Yes, they do. I was thinking that as I typed, but couldn’t be bothered to correct myself!
Point being though, we aren’t bringing local lads through. The only one in recnet years has been Quansah, and look what happened to him.
Through a series of events of things going better than expected we had to move on or graduate too many academy players quicker than expected and its created a void of talent and experience at the top end. The result has been a difficult year for the youth sides as every team got stretched in attempts to fill the void one group up. What it looks like we’re doing now is trying to fill those gaps with signings knowing that you cannot just magic out of thin air a top 20 year old.
I would imagine Inglethorpe has very little involvement in the identification and acquisition of who is being brought in, but would be working closely with Hughes and that team to identify where the gaps are and what needs to be brought in to get the development trajectory of the kids 1 or 2 age groups downs back on track.
A few of City’s recent grads have been local, but their academy is still filled with players they acquired from other clubs, both domestically and abroad.
Yes and they have started with 4 centre halves who are under 19 years of age and three of them are 6 foot 5.
Most people just don’t see it on the domestic side because they recruit a lot at the U15/U16 level and then there is an assumption those lads are brought through City’s system from 8 years old.
Yeah Foden, O’Reilly and Lewis are all more or less local, but last year we wont hte title with Trent, Jones and Quansah in the team. But beyond that their academy is absolutely filled with lads like Rio and Trey, who were identified and developed by someone else and then brought in a relatively late stage of their development. And that is before you point to the likes of Eric Garcia, Lavia and Bobb who are more like these signings we are making this summer
And, for all the negativity around our academy and Slot’s usage of young players, Rio was playing decent amounts of first team football this season meanwhile Ryan McAidoo rejected us to go to Man City from Chelsea and he’s playing U18s still despite being even more highly rated than Ngumoha when he left Chelsea.
I feel we recruited CB because it’s been an area we’ve struggled with, Quansah seems to be the only one of note where we did have a fair few players elsewhere when Klopp was using them
Yeah Nallo was next up after Quansah got promoted to the first team and you see pretty clearly in his limited time his lack of readiness. You can look at someone like Harwood Bellis at City and think he wasnt good enough for what they needed, but he is a premier league caliber player so if you need to promote him to the first team for 5 or so games in a season he isnt going to let you down.
Nallo the red. If he somehow gets serious minutes with us, it will be an epic story ![]()
Nallo whenever he sees testicles

His biggest problem is his lack of height hence why Ndiaye is making the bench the last 3 matches he is 18 and 6’4.Quansah should not have been sold but Slot did not fancy him and he brutally hooked him at half time.