Shrewsbury Town preview: Boss hopes kids can inspire senior players at Barnsley
It says a lot about your season when you are relying on a 16-year-old to inject some 'effort and endeavour' into the squad.
But that is where Shrewsbury Town find themselves ahead of two dead rubbers to close a disastrous 2024/25 League One campaign.
Consigned to rock bottom in the division, the travelling Salop faithful travel in hope rather than expectation their side can deliver the sort of away day that has eluded them for most the campaign.
However, they may get another glimpse into their future if 16-year-old Isaac England and 18-year-old Jack Loughran are afforded more time off the substitutes' bench at Oakwell.
And interim boss Michael Appleton hopes some of that youthful exuberance can rub off on the more senior players who are eager for the summer to arrive as soon as possible.
"We have got two or three younger players who we have got involved today, the two kids off the bench and what they will give you is a lot of effort and endeavour," said Appleton. "I think there are three or four players in the team who you get that with on a standard week in week out. I need to find a way of integrating that mentality into five or six other players.
"If we can do that, great, if not then we need to get to the end of the season as quickly as we can and think about next year."
Speaking about England particularly, the interim head coach added: "He certainly has got ability. There are certain aspects physicality-wise where he has to be better, but he will get that over the coming years.
"It might be that he has to have a little spell playing men’s football to get a bit of the out of possession stuff of it into him a bit more. We can help him and give him snippets of that, but if he is going to play 90 minutes and keep doing it three times in a week, it might be that he has to do that before he comes into the group.
"But, if you get the right people around young players they can flourish and certainly develop a lot quicker than you think they can."
While Shrewsbury Town will be plotting their rebuild in League Two, hosts Barnsley will be licking their wounds and plotting a path to the Championship after seeing their promotion bid spectacularly implode.
The Tykes were fifth - four points inside the play-off positions - when they beat Crawley Town 3-0 at the start of the year, but seven defeats in the following 10 matches and a slide to10th spelled the end for Darrell Clarke, who was replaced by assistant Conor Hourihane until the end of the season.
Ex-Villa midfielder Hourihane has hardly overseen an improvement, with one win out of the eight matches he has taken charge of since leaving Barnsley in 12th, 14 points adrift of the top six.
Despite that, the former Premier League club have seen enough to give Hourihane a two-year contract and the new permanent boss described himself as 'pretty emotional' following the announcement.
