Joe Riley

I hope we have a buy back clause or something along those lines, I think he could still become good enough for a role here. I think the injury and the u23s getting relegated have made us think it'd benefit him getting a permanent move somewhere.
 
Decent move for him, given the U23s being relegated.

Hopefully he will be one of those players that makes 50-100 appearances in League One, then a similar amount in the Championship, then becomes a solid PL player in his mid to late 20s. However, it is striking that, not for the first time, a player highly regarded on here, ends up moving to a League One team; that rather implies that a lot of Championship managers didn't want to take the risk at this stage, or weren't that impressed. So the idea that he is currently better than Italian international Darmian, seems unlikely to me.

Joe's Sheff United loan consisted of being an unused sub for 3 matches, 1 min as a sub, his one start, back to being an unused sub for a game, then injured. For United, one start in the Europa League and one sub appearance in the FA Cup, an unused sub for 4 matches, all between mid Feb and mid March, in LVG's 2nd season, during an injury crisis.

I tend towards the view that first team training probably tells you a lot more about how ready young players are, than games at U23 level.
 
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Good move for him. He's a good solid player but he just doesn't have that something special to make it at the top level. He's hit a dead end in the reserves and it's better to move on and let someone like O'Connor step into that role.

His performances for the first team were great when he got the opportunity. I was more impressed by him in the first team than at underage level. It shows he has a really good temperament which will stand him in good stead long term.
 
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