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Lines of succession

There are far too many tales of young players who started early and whose careers were blighted by injuries because they were playing intense football while they were still growing.
For us: Fowler, Owen, Gerrard, Rob Jones are obvious ones. Gerrard grew out of it to a degree but was a proper sick note when he was still growing and going hell for leather all game.
Giggs was another - although he had a long career, he had to change his game because of his tendency to pick up hammy injuries. Like John Barnes, he moved from explosive winger to playing in the centre where there was less running.
Then you get the likes of Sterling who just fall off a cliff, probably burnt out. Ben Chilwell the same.
It's not good for boys to be kicked off the park, week in, week out, by grown men.
I think we're handling Rio just fine. He's too good to leave out, he's too young to throw to the wolves. Thankfully he's also not the kind of cocky little showboater who demands to be booted up the arse 3 or 4 times a game.
 
There is a good argument (throwing player welfare out of the window) that kinda says if they're going to be at their best aged 17 - 24 why not just milk that and who cares if their career is over later on.

Anyway, with cup games coming in i'd love to see him earn a starting place and put more pressure on Captain Cut Inside & Shoot
 
You're then squeezing 2 big contracts (about 8 to 10 years' cover) into 1 big contract (4 to 5 years) after their first pro contract (say, 3 years). Agents won't like that and the nett result will be that wage demands for the single big contract goes up to make up for the reduction in number of contracts. Then the club ends up carrying a heavier risk because you've doubled wages on that single big contract. Injury risk aside, it also makes the player harder to shift if we decide to sell the player down the road during the contract period.
 
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