Yeah there was bewilderment as to what happened with Ledson early on in the season, he seemed to lose favour at Everton which meant he lost his England place too. A tough experience for an 18 year old , but a few months later he appeared to be back and scrapping away for us and England. Going on the games he played, it looked like he did ok at Cambridge, and I'm inclined (as an Evertonian!) to dismiss their fan's criticism about him trying to hit 40 yard passes to nowhere. He did that ok for England last November with talented youngsters on the same wavelength as him as opposed perhaps to League 2 guys not having his vision to gett on the end of passes. (Maybe harsh there) His next task will be to cement his place in the forthcoming England u19s games and for the EURO tournament in July, competing against 4 other mid fielders who have had PL exposure at some time. That'll tell us a bit more .
I’ll be honest I had noticed a number of little things happening over the last couple of years. You obviously don’t want to comment on them as it would be very unfair on a young player and most importantly each of them can be explained on their own, but taken as a whole it gives an interesting picture.
In many ways it would have led to me saying “Ledson’s lost his way” but to be absolutely fair to the lad there has not been a suggestion of that anywhere from anyone involved. That’s why the whole thing is quite confusing.
When you consider you had a lad two years ago as a 16 year old on the bench and supposedly involved in the next game. He played a Europa league game and did ok in that and after that we haven’t seen him.
You factor that in with a few things with the under 21’s. He wasn’t captain (Kenny was, when Ledson had always captained that age group). There was a time when he wasn’t involved in the under 21’s even when he was fit. I’m surprised he wasn’t first name on the team sheet really.
I remember the academy awards last year and again Ledson didn’t pick up an award. I probably concluded Unsworth maybe doesn’t fancy him as much and given he recalled Kenny to the first team squad and not Ledson last weekend that kind of fits in.
As with all these things there could be a million and one explanations. I’ve watched young players enough though to know that he should have probably been a bit closer to the first team and been capable of playing for the under 21’s when he was here (he’d been an under 21’s regular since he was 16!).
I’m not drawing any conclusions yet. I’m going to see what happens for next season. There is every chance he has been a bit caught up in Martinez’s methods which over time have looked increasingly abstract - that you have to have X amount of milestones before you are ready to play for the first team (training sessions, competitive appearances, under 21 appearances etc). I think the emergence of Dowell & Davies has rather shown that theory up.
That is the alternative though. We have seen Martinez was quite stubborn and there is a chance that they just didn’t quite know what to do with Ledson.
I agree with everything you say about his time at Cambridge. His manager spoke very well of him. The majority of the criticism was because of his rangey passing (like how a young Steven Gerrard played) and he was at times inconsistent which is fair. In many ways performance isn’t that critical at that level, just getting minutes is. Ironing out mistakes in your game etc. Green scored a couple of stunning goals for Tranmere but it wasn’t a successful loan.
I am confused as to what’s happens with Ledson though. I’m sure if he ends up in the first team next season it will be brushed aside and people will defend the masterplan but I do think bits of the last 18 months haven’t added up to me. I hope he gets a chance next season, having seen him play for the under 18's as a 14 year old all the way through he has the type of character that we need at Everton.
