ninjamonkey
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 5 Jun 2009
- Messages
- 17,509
Okay, fair enough. Lets say it was decided as a collective then that it's best for him to be elsewhere and isn't ready. You could be right, maybe some disagreed and think he is ready but obviously not enough of them did or they wasn't convinced enough to influence and convince Pep to keep him. At the very least, Pep didn't think he was ready and that's ultimately what matters the most. If Pep, or enough of the team thought otherwise, he'd be in America right now there's no getting away from that.
You're entitled to think that, you can be as certain as you want but why hasn't it happened if that's actually the case? You can say Pellegrini wasn't one for taking risks, i'll accept that, but Pep will give youth a chance. However, he's absolutely clear that he won't give them a chance for the sake of it, they have to be good enough and earn it, he's said it many times, even the chairman said it in his end of season interview, we won't compromise on quality. Again, if Maffeo was good enough, he'd be with the team now.
I think you're lending far too much weight to that game against United. He played well but it's one game, there's countless examples of kids that have performed great for a handful of games then are never seen again, why? Because they often get through on adrenaline and simply can't find that level consistently to establish themselves. I do agree that performance seemed to warrant another chance but we have no idea what goes on a day to day basis. They're training every single day and he was training with the first team before he was sent on loan, There's no logical reason for him not getting a game other than the assumption that he simply wasn't performing better than others in training.
Nobody is saying he needs to be the perfect flawless player from the get-go, they simply need to show that they are currently better than any other option we have or even just the second best option to make the squad.
He's at Girona now, we'll get to see him playing week in week out in La Liga, against a good standard of opposition and we'll see entirely risk free whether he can handle that level. If he can, he'll be judged and a decision will be made on whether he's good enough for our squad or whether he's to be tested at a better level further still, and if he's not then it's a bullet dodged that could otherwise had been costly.
If this were something specific to us, i'd accept you may have a case but It's not like we're the only club that do this with the kids either, almost all the top teams in Europe do exactly the same thing. You very rarely see a player come in from nowhere and just chucked in at the deep end unless they've either had a loan or multiple loans first, are in a competition they don't care about, have nothing left to play for or injuries have forced it upon them. It's even rarer still, that they actually hold their own and establish themselves in that side. Why do they all do it? Because there's no risk, no downside to it and it works.
Danilo may be the easier choice, but he's always the better choice.