The point is, he’s not even a fixture in the team yet, has no PL experience and is coming into a chaotic setup from a massively underperforming team. He could be the next Bryan Robson for all we know, but at least give him time to settle and perform before heaping untold pressures and expectations upon him.
Touted players enter professional football with sky high reputations all the time (see Greenwood for ourselves), and Mainoo is no different, but at the same time it can be a flip of the coin how they’ll cope in the adult game, not just in terms of raw ability, but also the rapid rise to stardom and the circus that follows. That’s why there is logic in erring on the side of cautious optimism over thinking there’s a sure thing there.
Many of us are looking forward to seeing what he can do, but feel the thread’s gotten out of control in terms of the way he’s being talked about - even if he is a massive success it won’t be a case of told you so, but what if he struggles and has growing pains like so many youngsters do? Perceived mocking is mostly going to be there to bring balance and a sense of reason to a thread that was getting more than a tad out of control.
