This "impact player" and "regular on the bench" line is just ridiculous, for me. I'm surprised there aren't people suggesting he be farmed out on loan somewhere to give him more experience.
I'm thankful that substitutes (and internet forums) didn't even exist when I started going otherwise I wonder how long it would have taken Mick Jones, Len Badger, Alan Birchenall and Alan Woodward to establish themselves as first team regulars. Mick Jones was four days short of his eighteenth birthday when he made his debut at Old Trafford in 1963 and within a month he'd scored four league goals in seven games. Len Badger made his league debut a week later at seventeen and was soon a regular. Alan Birchenall was just over a week past his nineteenth birthday when he made his debut in September 1964. Three days later he scored both our goals in a 2-0 win at Hillsborough and he went on to score seven more in our next ten league games. Woody was eighteen years and one month old when he made his first league start in October 1964. There were thirty one league games left and he played in twenty seven of them, scoring seven times.
Adams will be nineteen next month. It may be true, as Fulwood says, that you get "slip-ups" from young players but what you also get is pace, flair and a lack of inhibition. In those last few minutes at Swindon we saw a player visibly grow in confidence once it dawned on him that he had the beating of their defence and all he had to do to put the fear of God into them was to run at them and take them on. There's work to be done with him, no doubt, but he should be starting regularly from the outset next season, I've no doubt. Sink or swim is the way to go and my money would be on swim. He may or may not be as good a talent as those lads mentioned above but they made their impacts in the top flight. We're in the third tier.
