Jonny Drury and George Bennett sat down to discuss the young players who have been given a chance in pre-season.
A handful of Walsall's young talents have played in the pre-season games, and George looks at who has a good chance of making an impact on the first team squad.
A handful of Walsall's young talents have played in the pre-season games, and George looks at who has a good chance of making an impact on the first team squad.
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00:00George, we've seen an awful lot of young Sadlers given a run out in pre-season so far. There's
00:12been a few that have been on the fringes of the first team over the last season, but a
00:16few who are probably unknowns to a lot of Walsall fans. Just talk to us about the young
00:22sort of prodigies, talents that we've seen in these opening pre-season games and whether
00:27you think any of them might be forcing their way into the first-team squad and picture
00:31come the start of the league season?
00:36It was a good opportunity to kind of see some young guns for the first time. I mean, Kobe
00:43Wilkes played at the back alongside the more experienced Williams and Evan Weir. Dylan
00:49Thomas is someone we've seen a lot of and we'll talk a bit more about him in a moment.
00:55There are others, Charlie Ragg, a good opportunity as well for Ronan Mair who has obviously
01:02been in the first-team set-up, but it feels like a big pre-season for him. Caden Bennett
01:08at St Kitts and Nevis International now, back in March he made his international debut.
01:14So it was a great opportunity to kind of see some of those young players in action and
01:18one that I'm going to talk about the most is Dylan Thomas because he made his first-team
01:23debut in the EFL Trophy at the age of 16 back in last August against Brighton Under-21s
01:29in the EFL Trophy. Since then he had a couple of cameos from the bench against Shrewsbury
01:35and Sheppard United. So there's been first-team opportunities for him and Matt Sadler previously
01:39last season spoke about the fact that he's been with the first-team set-up at training
01:45the majority of the season. He's been there more with the first-team than the youth team
01:50last season and he's made a real impression. I think Rob Williams was even saying that
01:55he's had kind of feedback that he was in the top three performers in terms of fitness in
01:59training and that's among the first-team. So he's clearly making an impression and he's
02:04done that in pre-season again, came off the bench against Alverchurch and looked quite
02:08bright. Got 10 minutes off the bench against Villa in front of 8,200. So another big milestone
02:13individually for him to tick off and then scores the winning goal on the weekend. Great
02:19little finish. Started the game at right-wing back and then came inside. So he's played
02:26a variety of positions to be honest. A midfielder by trade but someone that's more than willing
02:31to play in any position. That's only going to boost his chances when it comes to trying
02:36to break into the first-team. In terms of that, Matt Sadler previously spoke about it
02:44as did Rob Williams, the academy manager, about a possibility of a loan move. I don't
02:50know when that will be, whether that's something they would look at doing in the second half
02:53of the season but they're clearly going to want to get some senior minutes into his leg
02:56and try and accelerate his development as they've done with Ronan Mayer recently.