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Connor Parsons departs…

He’s joined Waterford on a permanent deal. It’s a shame as I had high hopes for him. Hopefully he can find his way back to the EFL one day.

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  • Misread that as Watford for a second!!

  • edited December 2022

    Haha, me too @Malone

    It's a odd, as he's actually made the first team a few times but is obviously not now considered good enough to hold on to.

    @Manboobs

  • No offence to Parsons, but I’m amazed we got a fee for him. Presumably a nominal one, but still.

  • Only saw Parsons twice, but must say I saw some real promise there, so that's a shame, but I did start to wonder when he hasn't even been starting matches on loan in the National league

  • Wowzers, didn't read any link, but that is a surprise.

  • @Malone Waterford say they paid an undisclosed fee on their Twitter account. Oddly no mention of it on our side.

    Good business for a player who barely kicked a ball for us and presumably was going to be released in six months time.

  • Very much so.

    Unfortunately the two things I think about with this lad was Ewan moaning about him spitting gum on some video, and also him doing a load of swearing on another video.


    Great memories 🤣

  • Good luck to him in Ireland.

    Does not free up any squad spaces though. I think we might see quite a few leave and nobody come in.

  • edited December 2022

    What is the rule with squad places? Do you not count if you're under 21?

    He's just turned 22 in October, so wouldn't have qualified on that level?

    So was he not signed up for our squad list, like Thompson apparently isn't?

    But then how did he play in the Checkatrade and maybe league cup too? Or does the squad list not count for those?


    A few questions!

  • Seemed pretty good the few times he played, bit of a shame as he looked one of those more likely to make it but prospects come and go unfortunately. He had a chance and will play more over there.

    Checkatrade has some odd rules about how many people you need from the last squad but don't think you need to be registered for the league for that, and in any case if you're in the younger bracket you are on a different list anyway.

  • @Malone a player has to be born on or before 01/01/01 to qualify as an under 21 player for squad lists. There is no discretion - it’s a binary choice….

    Parsons is older than that so would have to take up a squad list place to play in the league.

    He was already on loan to Solihull by the time squad lists were finalized so didn’t appear on our list. There was a spare space so could have been added later but doubt he was.

    Squad lists don’t apply to the Papa Johns. We were out of the League Cup long before the list was finalised.

    squad lists get torn up on the 31st Dec

  • The spitting out of gum onto the pavement was indeed my observation. It was an event that stood out as a “not Gaz type of player “. Parsons did show a lot of promise on the odd occasion, but I was of the thinking that wouldn’t have gone down too well with the powers that be and would have left a black mark. I may well be wrong of course.🤷‍♂️

  • I reckon the fact he hardly played for Solihull was a bigger black mark.

  • edited December 2022


    Did you mean the player has to be born on, or "AFTER" 01/01/01?

    Otherwise we could claim the whole squad as being born before 01/01/01 😋

  • Flattered to deceive. A cracking goal against Villa kids but classic U-23 type player, lots of technique but soft in the challenge.

  • I think the fact he never pulled up trees in any of his various loan spells, usually ending up on the bench, was telling.

  • Quite generous to describe that finish as ‘cracking’.

    It wasn’t far off an open goal, arguably harder to miss it.

  • He appeared at pace from nowhere to crash it home, his run was a gamble for the tap in. Goals aren’t all about the final touch they can be about awareness and vision.

    But that was it. The club in Ireland aren’t even in the ‘top flight’, not looking good for him.

  • The only development player I would hate to lose is Jasper, and that is about 90% because of his personality!

  • Great for the lad. There’s bound to be a period of squad evaluation now and him getting a deal elsewhere ahead of the rush is good news.

    We will maybe start to see how serious we are about the budget. Those players who are marginal calls maybe will have to go elsewhere

  • I totally agree. Not sure too many on here would have heard him on commentary last Saturday but what a revelation he was. Hard to believe that he’s only 20 and has only been with the club for 6 months.

  • "The club in Ireland aren’t even in the ‘top flight’" - Not sure there's any comparison to be made other than he's going to play, A season training with a team in EFL League one is only going to do so much for him on his CV.

    Pattenden and AAH looked pretty good pre-season against a pretty lowly team and neither have done much of note since. Have to accept that if we have 15 or so Dev contracts on the go at any time unfortunately we'll have barren years as well as the odd gem or Papa John's filler.

  • We’ve got to actually start progressing in the Papa John’s and Carabao if we want to give some more game time to these youngsters. Would be nice to see that happen next season.

  • That's always been the issue with the stupid U-21 teams inclusion. To make it valuable for them they have limited how many players outside of the regular matchday squad we can play to develope our own youngsters. Ultimately to get players into the first team we need to have a smaller first team squad but I'm not sure how well that would go down if it weakens the first team. Look at the fit people were having over Dickinson getting a few games.

  • For me this just highlights the difficulty with the development squad. So far we have Mehmeti & Forino who've made it into the first team and could go further.

    However,noone else has even managed to come close to pushing themselves into the first team.

    For me success of the development system shouldn't just be about selling players but also about producing some "average" players who'll play for Wycombe for 4/5 seasons but go no further.

    Maybe the clubs vision is different but I'd like to see some players coming through who'll be good squad fillers - as opposed to Mehmeti & Forino who we may well be selling. I know the system needs to produce players to sell to be sustainable, but where are the middle ground players in all this?

  • The midfielder who scored twice at Cheltenham looked good, he may of been signed for the first team though cant remember.

  • edited December 2022

    These are all speculative signings, to a degree, but it seems to become apparent in pretty much the first year as to who is actually improving, though much of that happens away from our eyes at the training ground.

    If it were not for Mehmeti and Forino I would wonder if the club is actually handling the development part properly, but as we have shown we can do it, and do it well, perhaps it is just a lean year, as @StrongestTeam said. It's clearly not an exact science.

    The reality is that Mehmeti forced his way into a Championship team at breakneck speed, and Forino rose into the first team quickly too. Perhaps they have set the bar too high for us to regularly hit? @Twizz makes a great point about no middle ground of squad fillers so far - it has been two incredible success stories and not much else.

    The caveat is that lack of Papa Johns time others referenced. It's really hard to get meaningful minutes into these players, and it is hard even for a seasoned pro to look amazing without a run of games. Out of all of the rest, AAH is the one I would have liked to see more of. He was getting in good positions but often snatching at the final shot. I felt that if he put one away he would gain confidence and settle.

  • It is an interesting question of what is a good conversion rate of development player through to squad regular, or squad star player.

    Have we lucked out with these 2, or is 2 from every 20 or so a good rate? Hard to say really.

  • If we sell one or two for high six figures every couple of years I’d say that’s a success. But I think Anis and CF-J have set the bar very high.

    it seems like we’ve gone the loan route rather than scheduling regular reserve friendlies this season which is the approach I prefer.

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