Written by: Mitchell Bray
This week’s news regarding two promising young talents leaving Blues is nothing new.
Romello Mitchell, according to The Mirror, is being linked with a move to a Premiership club.
I have also seen Jude Bellingham being talked about in the same way on social media (nothing official that I can find).
In recent years we had an emerging Nathan Redmond and Demarie Gray in similar situations where unfashionable clubs were able to pluck them away.
As hard as it is to say, simply put we are not a big club so whoever manages our club and brings through talent knows that their tenure at St.Andrews is very short lived. At times we have crept to the edge of possibly turning things around, the nearest being February 2011 just after winning the Carling Cup, when we appeared to have finally set ourselves up having won a major trophy-only, for disaster to knock us back with Carsengate and relegation.
Had we moved on from that glorious Wembley triumph who knows what we could have achieved? Since the early days of Francis, Latchford, Burns to the latter-day talents of Redmond, Gray and now Romello Mitchell, nothing has changed.
All we can hope for is to at least see some of them actually play for the first team. In fairness to the majority of these emerging talents, we have seen them play and taken joy from that. But, until this club of ours actually gets wealthy owners with a clear vision for determined success and a ground structure to match, our seasons will remain just treading water.
Over the decades we have been labelled as ‘sleeping giants’ just waiting to emerge and take on the elite. At present though, the fact remains that until we get serious backing our prospects get tougher by the season. Young talents will continually leave which is bad enough but to use the club as a stepping stone, which is increasing steadily is very disheartening for supporters.