The Premier League Panel: Will we ever see another Class of '92?

NationalWorld.com

Which wonderkids have impressed our expert panel? And why are some clubs getting more out of young players than others?

Transcript

00:00Hello. I'm Matthew Gregory, and welcome to the Premier League panel. This week, we're

00:08going to take a look at some of the breakthrough players of the season so far, and discuss

00:11why some teams seem to handle youth development better than others. To help me discuss all

00:15of that, I'm joined, as always, by an expert panel. National World's Curtis Leland is here,

00:21as is North East Football reporter Mark Carruthers. Curtis, we'll get to the nuts and bolts of

00:26why some teams seem to do better with young players than others in a minute. But let's

00:30start by just looking at some of the best young players in the top flight right now.

00:33Which new faces have impressed you the most so far this season?

00:37So I think the standout has to be John Duran from Aston Villa. Obviously, he's come in

00:42his second choice behind Ollie Watkins at the moment, but almost every time he gets

00:46on the pitch, he seems to score goals. He's scored the winner against Bayern Munich. And

00:52he's just getting to the point where I feel like he will get frustrated if he's not starting

00:56games because he's playing that well when he comes on. He's making such good impact.

01:00And I think he only costs 14 million from like Chicago Fire or something.

01:05Yeah, Chicago Fire. I can't remember how much he was. But his scoring rate's been ridiculous. I

01:10haven't sort of looked in the last couple of weeks. I know he has sort of drawn blanks in

01:13the last few games. But there was a point to which sort of, you know, minute for minute,

01:17he was scoring more goals per game than Erling Haaland than almost anyone in Europe. He was

01:21absolutely firing them in. I mean, it's a weird situation. How do you deal with a situation like

01:25that, Curtis, when you've got a player who's scoring that many goals, but he's still second

01:29choice? How do you handle having Watkins and Duran on the same team at the same time?

01:33I'm not sure, because it might affect the balance if they go for an old school 4-4-2.

01:38So it might be a case of just rotating them based on who's on form. And then whoever plays has

01:43essentially got to score a goal to stay in the team. So that might be the best solution at the

01:49moment. But I guess it's early days for Duran, he's only 20 as well. So I saw a statistic,

01:56it's something like he's scored something like three or four match winning goals, and it's

02:01already like joint level, like for an impact on a substitute. I did not, I actually knew this stat

02:07because I got it early in the season. But yeah, he scored his, I think it was his first three

02:10goals or three of his first four were all winners as a substitute. And that is already the most

02:15ever in a Premier League season by anyone, even Sheringham, Kevin Gallagher, all the great sort of

02:20super subs of old Solskjaer and so on. None of them ever scored three winners in a season and

02:24Duran did it straight away. I think the third was that absolute screamer against Everton.

02:30Mark, I mean, obviously, John Duran's been taken. Who's been your sort of pick of the bunch so far?

02:35Well, firstly, I'll say it probably would have helped having Jason Jones here, but I'm going

02:39to go for Ahmad Diallo at Manchester United. I feel as if there is a perfect storm coming

02:46for Ahmad because obviously with Ruben Amaran coming in, he's just hitting form at the right

02:50time. He's made a big impact, particularly in the last sort of four weeks, I would say,

02:54when he's really hit some form, found the net on a couple of occasions as well.

02:58We know what he could do. You could see that spell at Sunderland that he had, that he's just a little

03:02bit special. He's got something about him. And I just feel as if we've saw little bits of it at

03:08Manchester United since he went back there last season. I just think with the new manager coming

03:13in, with the style of play that Amaran plays, he could fit perfectly into that. And I think

03:18you're going to see the very, very best of Ahmad Diallo in the next few months. I think he's someone

03:22that will be a big player or could be a big player under the new head coach. I want to say manager,

03:28but it's head coach, isn't it? They've gone technical on him.

03:31I think he is now. Yeah. Ten Hag was a manager, Amaran was a head coach, I think. But

03:35we'll see how that all pans out.

Category

Transcript

Recommended