Duncan Idehen

Whoooo????

Literally forgot who this dude was…

Considering he is a young lad who got thrown into a crap team last season I thought he did ok and showed glimpses of his potential. Was a little surprised Hurst kind of wrote him off so quickly and made him available to go in the summer.

He may have perhaps have offered some cover at Centre Back. But we have 4 strong players for that position now as well as another young lad (Goundry) and Crookes can also play there.

I wish him well and hope he can get his career back on track. Can see him going a step down or two. He needs regular game time now.

PH is around the players every day. I fully support his judgement.

Quoted from lukeo

PH is around the players every day. I fully support his judgement.

I agree mate. Hurst had made up his mind and it was clear the player wasnt going to get a chance. I was surprised but you have to go by the managers judgement.

And in both of his spells here Hurst's recruitment was been a lot more hit than miss. This summer I cant think of any signing that hasnt impressed and he kept Waterfall on when a lot of us here thought after last season he was done. So yes I will bow to his judgement.

As with Starbuck, it's disappointing to see the young lads not make it and then go elsewhere which (like Marinerdan) I've a sneaky feeling will be higher up than the fifth tier.

I thought he showed a lot of potential actually, raw but considering he was as first year professional that's to be expected,  For the early parts of the season he looked our best defender.  Didn't take a lot, I know!

Shame as I felt he had the ingredients to be a good defender, reminded me quite a bit of first spell Simon Ford.  Athletic but somehow languid at the same time.  Hurst (and Doig) knows his defenders well though so got to trust what he's seeing/seen.  Can't imagine he would have been a huge wage and whilst we're well stocked for centre-backs at the minute, it does make me wonder what went on last year for these young lads to just fall off a cliff like they have.

If he was going into the U23 system then I doubt we would have ended his contract, he would have just moved on for a sell-on like Starbuck.

I think he will rock up somewhere in non-league over the next few days.

Sadly a lad typical of the vast majority of academy players.

His hopes were raised though when the numpty Holloway started to use him, when he was no way good enough for the pro game

Quoted from diehardmariner

Shame as I felt he had the ingredients to be a good defender, reminded me quite a bit of first spell Simon Ford.  Athletic but somehow languid at the same time.  Hurst (and Doig) knows his defenders well though so got to trust what he's seeing/seen.  Can't imagine he would have been a huge wage and whilst we're well stocked for centre-backs at the minute, it does make me wonder what went on last year for these young lads to just fall off a cliff like they have.

Guesswork here, but maybe some of the young players were signed up to overly-generous deals, given that PH is clearly not a fan of the length of contracts given to some (MG, Ira, Morais, Rose), perhaps he wasn't a fan of the amounts either? Pretty much the entire intake that season; Curran Painter Idehen Starbuck have moved on, and only Starbuck higher. Was gonna say Khouri is the exception but think he's younger than them. Battersby might be the exception


Looks like PH and Doig decided that Goundry was a better choice for many reasons (including financially) than Idehen?

Quoted from diehardmariner

I thought he showed a lot of potential actually, raw but considering he was as first year professional that's to be expected,  For the early parts of the season he looked our best defender.  Didn't take a lot, I know!
.

I think he'll be like most former players where he's remembered as much better than he actually was. If you look at his games objectively you'd probably find he didn't particularly stand out at all, on his debut he gave away the goal with sloppy defending. This is the thing nobody remembers and makes it up in their own heads, he started against Walsall in and gifted them a goal plus got booked. Followed up by playing in a battering against Salford, the last league game he played in was another battering against Exeter where he was dragged off after 45 minutes and this was under Holloway who bought in people from 4 leagues below and people who had not played a game in 2 years. Apart from appearing in what was called our pre season and looking okay I don't recall him doing anything that would make me question Hurst's verdict when he came in. He clearly knew he could bring in better even if we went down and he has.

I would be incredibly surprised if some big club comes in for him as a development player, think it's more likely he'll either join a team in our league, or more likely lower down in non league football to try to start over. This isn't a personal attack on him or to be disrespectful, I've never met the kid but it's a realistic look at what he showed in first team football for us in his handful of first team appearances.