Manchester United pride themselves on promoting youth talent, with their record of having an academy graduate in the first-team squad for more than 85 years summing up the club’s legacy.
That drive has been boosted further since Ineos arrived, with a focus on recruiting young talent from outside for the academy adding to the manager’s options.
However, even in this pipeline, some talents are lost and some leave to seek a new challenge after not developing enough.
Man United might be in danger of letting the latter happen with one of the most prodigiously talented players in their ranks.
The curious case of Jayce Fitzgerald
Often, youth players can be broadly divided into a few categories. There’s one who’s destined to make it so they don’t go on loan and are introduced to the first team around the age of 18.
There’s another category where there’s hope for a breakthrough but seasoning is needed so they’re sent out on loan to prove themselves.
The third is for a player who’ll benefit more from staying around the setup so he’s challenged by making him slowly, but constantly move up the ranks.
When a player who, at the age of 15, starts dominating U18s football, the chances are that he’s either in the first precocious category or the third category.
Unfortunately, Jayce Fitzgerald is in a category of his own where he’s impressed for the U18s since he was 15 but has yet to play a game even for the U21s, let alone the first team.
There have been mitigating factors. He suffered an injury last season that ruled him out for about five months but his performance before and after the injury have made it clear that he’s outgrown the U18 level.
Dithering on giving him the next challenge could see Man Utd lose him.
Could Man Utd lose Jayce Fitzgerald?
Now that Fitzgerald, often dubbed as United’s own Sergio Busquets, is back playing again regularly, he has a new obstacle to overcome in the name of Sekou Kone.
Furthermore, the likes of Tyler and Jack Fletcher, Jack Moorhouse, and Jim Thwaites seem to have leapfrogged him in the pecking order due to his cruelly timed injury.
Still, youth development is never linear and that is something United would do well to consider before moving on to the next shiny toy in the youth ranks.
Promoting him to the U21s at least and letting him battle it out with Kone will benefit both players far more than the current scenario where Kone isn’t completely ready and Fitzgerald isn’t getting challenged.
United need to be careful and address the situation before Fitzgerald becomes a case of “what if” by flourishing elsewhere. He has the potential and talent to do so.
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