Aston Villa midfielder Morgan Rogers piled up more misery on Manchester City as Villa became the latest team to beat the defending Premier League champions. Man City have managed to win just once in the last 12 matches and are now 6th in the PL table. What has further compounded their suffering is that some of the academy players they sold are doing really well. That includes Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, Brahim Diaz, Jadon Sancho, Pedro Porro, Douglas Luiz, Romeo Lavia and Jeremie Frimpong. And fans are noticing that another player just joined that list. That player is Morgan Rogers.
Rogers has been a bargain signing for Aston Villa so far, as the 22-year-old has been giving authoritative performances week in and week out, helping Villa to be amongst the in-form teams both in Europe and the league. Rogers has 5 goals and 3 assists in 17 league appearances so far this season, and the England international was the one who scored and assisted in Villa’s 2-1 win over Man City.
Since then, a picture has been doing the rounds that has got fans talking about the gems City has let slip through their fingers. The pic shows Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer playing for City with Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland. Most fans are saying the same thing: City made a mistake letting such good players go, especially when their squad is so thin now. One tweet read, “Bernardo KDB replacements was right there.”
Another fan said, “Selling Palmer and Roger’s might be Pep’s worst ever mistake at Manchester City.”
Speaking about City manager Pep Guardiola, a fan asked, “Is there any manager worse with utilising academy talents than this man?”
Meanwhile, some fans have defended City and Pep’s decision. One of them said, “Who cares, they won’t win 4 EPL consecutively. Pep won.”
Another fan tweeted, “Pep said they came at the wrong time, he said a lot of senior players were at their prime when Rodgers left City.”
Rogers’ time at Man City
Rogers was officially a Manchester City player for 4 years, from 2019 to 2023. Joining City from West Bromwich Albion in August 2019, Rogers spent the first 18 months at City playing in the youth system. Making 6 appearances for the U18 side, Rogers was one of the key players who were instrumental to City winning the FA Youth Cup in 2020. He was one of the scorers in the 3-2 final win against Chelsea, which helped City to win their 3rd FA Youth Cup overall and the first since 2008. Incidentally, Cole Palmer was also a scorer in the final.
Besides this, Rogers has also played 6 matches in the UEFA Youth League and made 25 appearances for the U21 side, playing 20 times in the Premier League 2 competition.
Looking back at the time at City, Rogers has mentioned it was a learning curve for him at Etihad: “There’s a load of incredible quality and talent there. So to stick out as one is very hard and only a few have done that. It’s good for a learning experience, and that’s what I used it as, to soak up information, to play around players, and to say that I’ve got to play and train with some of the best players in the world is something that could never be taken away from me.”
While Rogers says he still has a lot of progress to make to reach the level he wants to, Manchester City will surely be going back to the drawing board to re-evaluate their assessment of academy players.
