[drewks]

I'll be the first to state that I feel we paid way over the odds for Oli Burke; £15 million for a player with little track record seemed ridiculously high. Having said that, I will be very disappointed if we sell him in January, as reported. I just feel we have seen nothing of him and he's been given precious little opportunity to impress or even play. He clearly has a good level of potential that clubs have felt worth the investment, I'd just like to see whether that potential can be turned into actual performance. If he gets the chance and doesn't perform, then fair enough and we should not keep him. But let's give him a chance, he's a young guy with a big price tag around his neck.
Part of my issue with the Burke situation is my concern that we are not giving our younger players more of a chance, bar the usual run out in the Carabao Cup. We have concerns about the lack of pace in central midfield but continue with two out of a Brunt/Livermore/Barry partnership when we could introduce Field or Harper; we have all expressed concerns about both Heghazi and Bartley in defence but BD won't consider Adarabioyo as an alternative. When we go out into the loan market, we go for Sako aged 30, Hoolahan aged 36 and Mears aged about 106. Thank goodness for Barnes in keeping the average age down. We complained when Pulis regularly turned out the oldest team in the league, I was hoping that this would change under BD but that does not seem to be the case.
If this team gets us promotion, then fantastic and I'll take my hat off to BD but it won't change my view that I feel we are missing an opportunity to play the younger talent.

Great post Steve, you make a lot of very valid points.

I think we're all frustrated with BD not using our youngsters more, especially when they seem to 'have it' on the occasions when they ARE seen. I guess the coaches see them every day though, and are therefore obviously in a much better position to make the right call.
Also with BD being a real newby still, he's nearly always going to go for the safer option rather than take any sort of a risk with the younger ones. Not trying to defend it, just understand it!
I just hope that in a few months we're not still saying the same thing!