Joao Carvalho

[Paplane]

Keiran Dowel played well last night, and has been playing well for Sheff Utd since he went there. He has undoubted quality but faded badly when he was with us. Wilson at the Sheep Dip was tearing up the league but now has faded,  as have a few other of their young players.

It's what happens to young talent in the championship after Christmas. The rigours of the demading & relentless league, on top of them learning how to be senior pros, and then having to deal with poor weather, injuries, pressures to get results etc gets too much and they burn out and fade.

Carvalho is a similar age to those others I've mentioned and will be having similar issues. And, on top of all that, he's also living in a foreign country and dealing with that too.

The issues were 100% to be expected, which is why you don't spend £13m on such a player & leave him with no back up.

The player isn't a bad player (albeit grossly overpriced), so the problem wasn't the player, it was bad management.

Yes, bad management by AK perhaps but Lampard has suffered similar over there. And he has half a team of youngsters who are suffering. It's got so bad for him, if he weren't Frank Lampard he'd be looking square at the sack now. So it's maybe not as obvious as we're saying.

Maybe if Dias and Goncalves had been preforming well AK could've rested Carvalho without loss of reputation with the owner.