Send Your Kids To Cheltenham

No, not the festival. Big clubs have faith in unheralded sides to develop their young stars on loan, from the Robins to Donny, Accy to Stevenage. Is your club one of them?

Huw Davies
Choosing a nursery can be difficult. You go into the process thinking that all your child needs from a daycare centre is a roof over their head and food in their gob. Then suddenly you’re being given different menus, different types of roof, options upon options upon options. Now imagine you’re doing that with a dozen kids, all unique, and 40-odd nurseries are interested.

Sending young footballers on loan is, admittedly, not quite the same as putting the precious fruit of your loins into daycare. For a start, your child doesn’t have the potential to earn you millions in a few years’ time. What? It’s true! 

But finding the right environment requires similar care and commitment, whether it’s for your progeny or a club’s prodigy. Like you, they must find their players a temporary home where they can develop, grow, experience other cultures and, ideally, avoid any serious injuries. The wrong loan is unlikely to be disastrous for a budding star but it can be a waste of everybody’s time. Pick the right club and the results can be perfect for all parties.

I looked through the last three seasons, plus this summer’s transfer window, to see which Football League clubs are being entrusted with richer outfits’ brightest young prospects – and not just why they earn that trust, but how they use it to their benefit. Don’t worry, the focus here isn’t on the Premier League. This is still Not The Top 20.

Actually, it’s Not The Top 44. Although several second-tier sides have relatively good loan records, including Huddersfield and Blackburn, I’m focusing on football further down the pyramid, limiting the scope to clubs who are currently in Leagues One and Two. It’s those early loans we’re interested in, not those Get Out Of The Championship Free cards for sides with parachute payments, and that’s why I’ve narrowed the focus to players aged 21 or under at the time of their move (allowing for one or two 22-year-olds when relevant). That takes the list down to, oh, about 600 individual loan deals. This is not an exaggeration.

What did we learn? Well, a few things. Jökull Andrésson lives his life on loan. Louie Barry will be shared around League Two until he wins promotion from it. And Brighton have an inexhaustible supply of young talent. But we also gained an insight into which EFL clubs have set up a popular stall in the loan market – see, Cheltenham fans, it’s not all bad – as well as which managers you’d trust your kids with. Steve Evans, apparently.

Top clubs seem to like Joey Barton – more than they did as a player, at any rate – because he gives minutes to young loanees

Some, you already know about. Michael Appleton’s reputation for developing loanees is well-founded. His peak in that regard was 2020/21, when loanees Brennan Johnson (19 upon arrival), Morgan Rogers (18) and TJ Eyoma (20) helped his Lincoln side to reach the League One play-off final, which they’d ultimately lose to Blackpool. In their first-ever loan spells, Johnson started 41 league games and Eyoma 37, with Rogers making 26 line-ups despite joining only in January. Callum Morton (20) and Robbie Gotts (20) also pitched in as upstart temps, while on-loan Alex Palmer played 48 matches in nets, but he was 24 so he’s effectively dead to us.

Rogers and Johnson, in particular, catapulted themselves into the limelight as well as the Imps into a play-off final: the former earned an upper-Championship loan and the latter went straight into Nottingham Forest’s first team, then to the Premier League, then to Tottenham. How do you like them, Apples? 

After that, it wasn’t surprising that football’s self-anointed royalty trusted Appleton to handle their crown jewels. Manchester City, the mutual beneficiaries of Rogers’ impressive Imps spell, gave him Lewis Fiorini (19) at Lincoln and again at Blackpool, following Appleton’s appointment there in 2022, and also sent Rogers to Bloomfield Road shortly before the loan whisperer was sacked. Arsenal endowed Appleton with 18-year-olds Brooke Norton-Cuffy (Lincoln) and Charlie Patino (Blackpool), and Liverpool handed 21-year-old Rhys Williams to his Tangerines for a time. Wherever Appleton turns up next, we can expect some elite prospects to follow.

Identifying a manager who’ll actually put your players on the pitch is key, as is their reputation. League Two Crawley wouldn’t have had Liverpool’s James Balagizi (18) nor Arsenal’s Mazeed Ogungbo (19) last season without former Gunners youth coach Kevin Betsy in charge – before Crawley jettisoned him barely a month later – just as Steve Cooper’s appointment enabled Swansea to borrow high-calibre players he’d previously coached for the Three Lion Cubs, or whatever England’s Under-17s are called. Tony Mowbray is respected as a good manager of young players and receives good young players on loan as a result. But we’re steering into Championship waters here, a phrase rarely written so soon after ‘Crawley’.

In League One, Joey Barton and Ian Evatt have useful buy-in from the big boys of English football. James Trafford’s two loans from Manchester City to Evatt’s Bolton were the gold standard, earning the 20-year-old a Championship-skipping move to Premier League Burnley. With Liverpool teenager Conor Bradley immediately becoming a regular in 2022/23, a campaign in which he’d go on to win all three of Bolton’s Player of the Year awards, Evatt was duly lent another two top-tier teens in January: Shola Shoretire (18) from Manchester United and Luke Mbete (19) from City again. Those clubs clearly saw improvement at Bolton as being IanEvatt-able.

As for Barton, top clubs seem to like him – more than they did as a player, at any rate – because he gives minutes to young loanees. Last season demonstrated this.

Not long after Newcastle’s Elliot Anderson (19) had given the Gas a stellar spell on loan in the second half of 2021/22, Middlesbrough’s Josh Coburn (19) and Everton’s Lewis Gibson (who’d just turned 22) had already made themselves fixtures in Rovers’ starting XI when Liverpool defender Jarell Quansah (19) joined in January 2023, making his debut on his last day as a teenager. That’s a footballer’s elite mentality for you – I spent mine in Metro’s, Cardiff. Anyway, Quansah subsequently started nearly every match; the only exceptions were one substitute appearance and three games missed through suspension. Now he’s made his Premier League debut.

Quansah had effectively replaced another inexperienced loanee, too, in Burnley’s (now Coventry’s) Bobby Thomas, then aged 21. Thomas engineered a mid-season loan move to Barnsley instead, which left Barton telling reporters, “I’ll level with you, we’ve had enough of him as well” as he slowly shrunk and transformed into a corn cob. Still, Barton has since secured the temporary services of hotshots from Chelsea, Brentford and Aston Villa, so maybe relationships aren’t everything.

Don’t tell Steve Evans I said that, though. “I know Pep well,” declared the Stevenage gaffer after Guardiola loaned him 20-year-old Finley Burns for this campaign. Charlie McNeill (19) has also come in, from the red half of Manchester, with goalkeeper Krisztian Hegyi (20) joining from West Ham. 

What do these clubs see in Evans as a babysitter? Possibly it’s his solid recent record with young loanees, taking Gillingham to consecutive top-ten League One finishes and Stevenage to a League Two promotion with support from a veritable crêche of borrowed talent. Evans didn’t use the kids as much as some other managers have, but given that there’s also a clear clash of playing styles, he must’ve done something to convince the Manchester City manager of Stevenage’s merits, because Burns is “very highly thought of” by Guardiola, says Evans. And he’d know.

But I did say we would look at clubs, not managers, so let’s do that.

“We’re looking to capitalise on our reputation for developing players, to focus on permanent under-23 signings to emulate the success of our previous loan players”

Cheltenham seem to have mastered the loan-before-the-loan. It’s a good deal for them, but a better deal for the parent club. Finn Azaz makes 37 appearances with Cheltenham, so – after Aston Villa have poached Azaz from West Bromwich Albion – he’s ready for his big award-winning season at Newport, which convinces Plymouth to loan him in, then loan him in again, and perhaps buy him when Villa feel the time is right. Callum Wright fares well in two spells with the Robins, which persuades Blackpool to pay Leicester a fee for him. Aaron Ramsey spends four teenage months at Whaddon Road in League One, impresses enough to earn Championship loans with Norwich and Middlesbrough, and now he’s a £14m Premier League player with Burnley – less than 18 months after playing for Cheltenham.

It’s true that Cheltenham don’t reap the biggest benefits from those scenarios, but, ironically for a short-term deal, the impact can be long-term. For a start, you’re near the top of the list to be donated a season of potentially league-leading individual quality. Furthermore, Tom Ware, now head of recruitment at Shrewsbury, told Transfer Room last year as the Robins’ head of recruitment analysis that, “We are also looking to capitalise on our reputation for developing players, to focus on permanent under-23 signings to emulate the success of our previous loan players”.

This was after Transfer Room revealed that Cheltenham, in the 2021/22 season, gave their loanees a higher average of the minutes available to them than any other club in Europe. Almost. They were actually second, because marginally ahead of them were… fancy a guess? No? Go on. Oh, fine, have it your way – marginally ahead of them were Doncaster Rovers.

Donny had provided loanees with plenty of game time the previous season as well. In their 2020/21 campaign, 20-year-old Matt Smith (the other one, from Manchester City) and 19-year-old Taylor Richards, from Brighton, were two of their most-used players; Josef Bursik, 20, played every league game until he was recalled by Stoke, en route to playing for four different English clubs that season; replacement loanee keeper Ellery Balcombe (21) had two runs in the first team; Tyreece John-Jules (20) learned from a productive stint; and Elliot Simoes (21) and Rayhaan Tulloch (19) were… well, they were also there. The following season, 20-year-old Matt Smith (the other other one, from Arsenal) was third among the whole Donny squad for minutes played, and 20-year-old Manchester United spirit Ethan Galbraith was sixth, while teenage winger Josh Martin started nearly every game after his January loan from Norwich. After that, Doncaster gratefully took in loanees from an equally grateful Liverpool, Brighton and Leicester.

Are Donny the answer, then? Maybe. There’s a strong claim from Crewe, the most famous developers outside of Apple – a claim that really needs putting on their ‘Welcome To Crewe’ road signs. Arthur Okonkwo (20) was so impressive last season that Arsenal recalled him from the 85th-best team in England and sent him to the 2nd-best team in Austria. Crewe casually replaced him with Brighton’s James Beadle (18), who is now in a League One promotion charge with Oxford. Crewe’s new No.1 is Liverpool’s highly-rated Harvey Davies, who turned 20 the other day and could complete an impressive Railwaymen trilogy in goal. They aren’t just finders of keepers, either: Nathan Wood (18) was a notable Winterval present in 2020/21, as was Southampton’s Ryan Finnigan (19) two years later. Finnigan has now stepped up a division, to Shrewsbury, as was surely the plan.

Are Accrington unlikely contenders for the Best EFL Club To Send Your Young Talents On Loan trophy, if it’s possible to fit that title on a trophy? As we saw with Stevenage, playing style is less of a problem than a Premier League snob might think. Accrington were entrusted with a trio of Chelsea lads in 2020/21, including a 19-year-old Jon Russell, and a Manchester City pair in 2021/22. City boy James Trafford didn’t have the success that he would later enjoy with Bolton, but his struggles were magnanimously accepted by manager John Coleman, who unwittingly insulted Gigi Buffon by saying, “You don’t get a fully accomplished goalkeeper at 21”. 

Trafford’s City team-mate, Yeboah Amankwah (20), still got a lot of minutes that season, and in 2022/23 it was Everton defender Ryan Astley (20) and Brentford attacker Aaron Pressley (21) who were each making 20-plus league starts in League One. However, we can’t rule out the possibility that with those two, Coleman thought he was booking tribute acts to sing in the club bar. This season, Brad Hills (19) has already nabbed our inaugural Young Player of the Month award for League Two, so the Norwich boy could well prove that Coleman’s mustard.

Carlisle warrant a mention. They may no longer be borrowing such future international stars as James Chester, Oli Norwood and Corry Evans – though, to be fair, we can hardly know that at this stage – but Greg Abbott, who was Carlisle’s manager when they took those players from Manchester United, is now the club’s head of recruitment and helping them to be prolific in their development loans, even if they now tend to shop in smaller ponds (I think that’s the phrase).

Location is an important factor when a not-massive club loans a young player to an even-more-not-massive club. Leyton Orient often deal locally, with some success, and Walsall also prioritise proximity, or at least consider it. Some clubs have regular dealings with another: Mansfield with Nottingham Forest, for example, or Harrogate with Huddersfield.

Newport have arguably the best record with this profile of low-key loan. Sure, they had Villa’s Azaz, and now a 23-year-old Adam Lewis from Liverpool (too old for our consideration), but they’ve also been successful when borrowing young players from clubs outside the Premier League: Scott Twine from Swindon, Brandon Cooper from Swansea, Oli Cooper from Swansea, Matt Baker from Swoke – uh, Stoke. Teenage Bristol City forward Seb Palmer-Houlden looked like being this season’s smash hit, only to tear his hamstring. We hope to see him firing again in 2023/24.

Burton Albion and Swindon are two more who’ve improved other clubs’ up-and-coming players in recent years, but both have so far moved away from that model this year, with Swindon skewing older and the Brewers limiting themselves to just one youthful loanee in Watford’s Kwadwo Baah (20), formerly of Rochdale. Morecambe continue to attract talent as well.

Finally – yes, I’ll let you go in a minute – let’s take a quick look at what’s happening right now.

Wycombe may be changing approach: this summer, Matt Bloomfield signed as many under-21 players on loan as Gareth Ainsworth did in his last seven windows

It’s too early to say, but Oxford could be repositioning themselves in the loan market. Karl Robinson generally preferred a more mature addition, either readymade or at least experienced: in 2021/22, for instance, all six of Oxford’s loanees were aged 22 to 25. Robinson did make exceptions – Marcus Browne, Ben Woodburn, even Marcus McGuane although he was a well-travelled 21-year-old – and signing Lewis Bate (19) and Kyle Joseph (20) last season appeared to imply a change in tack… but he did also recruit Yanic Wildschut and Josh Murphy in that window, so perhaps not.

Yet his replacement, Liam Manning, is putting faith in a teenage Beadle between the sticks, starting Brentford’s Fin Stevens (20) and giving minutes to Everton’s Stanley Mills (19), presumably not just to please daddy Danny. Another sonny, Perkins, has come from Leeds for a teenage getaway.

If Oxford are recalibrating their recruitment strategy under Manning, it would make sense: he had tremendous success with young loanees in his year-and-a-bit managing MK Dons. Though the club had previously done well to get Ethan Laird (19) before his tenure, it was Manning who brought in Aston Villa’s Kaine Kesler Hayden (19), Wolves’ Theo Corbeanu (19), West Ham’s Conor Coventry (21) and Chelsea’s Jamie Cumming (22), before returning to the well in the summer of 2022 for Cumming, his Chelsea team-mate Henry Lawrence (20) and Villa’s Louie Barry (19), among others.

Since Manning’s enforced departure, Paris Maghoma (21) – last January – is MK Dons’ only loan signing across two transfer windows who was younger than 28. 

Oxford may be going the other way. And we could be seeing a similar shift at Wycombe as well, where this summer saw Matt Bloomfield sign as many under-21 players on loan as Gareth Ainsworth did across the Chairboys’ previous seven windows.

The times, they are a-becoming quite different. But even as the Premier League’s elite search ever more keenly for technical perfection, they’re still finding a way for the pyramid’s supposedly unfashionable clubs to teach their talented tyros some life learning.

Good. You can give your kids all the riches imaginable, but you can’t overestimate the value of a good nursery.