Last Friday night, Leeds United defeated Sheffield Wednesday 2-0, adding another victory to an already impressive Championship record. Wilfried Gnonto and Patrick Bamford both stole the show with two important goals.
In addition to the attacking players for the visiting Whites, Leeds’ Joe Rodon and Ethan Ampadu were also playing at full tilt, putting on incredible performances for the promotion-chasing team no matter what was thrown at them.
At the end of the game, Ampadu and his team would have won the Man of the Match award. He had won all of his aerial duels that evening and had also been measured on the ball, making two crucial passes.
The highly regarded young player coming through the ranks at Leeds will be hoping to learn from Ampadu, the Welsh talent who looks comfortable playing in the defensive midfield position where the former Chelsea player has excelled this season.
Charlie Crew’s statistics at youth level
With Daniel Farke talking up an unnamed youngster recently – the German manager saying the starlet in question had “caught his eye” – speculation seems to point in the direction of Charlie Crew being hyped up by the Whites boss according to journalist Joe Donnohue.
That hype isn’t unwarranted if the mystery youngster is indeed the Welsh teenager, the 17-year-old prodigy starring in the U21 set-up at Elland Road this season before picking up a recent injury knock.
Crew has continued to play in 12 Premier League 2 games so far this season; in February, the youthful holding midfielder even led the Whites against the Arsenal U21s.
Crew has also excelled for Wales at the international level at a variety of age groups, appearing in 28 games overall and earning two caps for the U21s.
The next big step for the highly regarded 17-year-old Crew will be forcing his way into the Whites first team over time. Manned as a “huge prospect” by his Wales U21 manager Matt Jones, Crew has even trained in the senior fold on occasion alongside fellow Leeds faces and compatriots Ampadu and Rodon when playing for his International side.
A homegrown Ampadu replacement
Crew will aim to mirror Ampadu’s career trajectory, the versatile 23-year-old managing to come out of the other side of being a youngster with the world at his feet to eventually star in men’s football.
The ex-Chelsea man is a key first-teamer for Farke this season alongside fellow Welsh teammates such as Daniel James, staggeringly present in 42 of Leeds’ 43 games this campaign and still continuing to battle and give his all to try to steer the West Yorkshire titans to promotion glory.
Crew is some way off coming into the Leeds first team now and causing a stir, especially with Ilia Gruev and Glen Kamara forming such a tight-knit partnership in holding midfield, but he will take some hope in Ampadu’s story knowing that the summer signing was once discarded from Stamford Bridge as a starlet trying to find his way.
A loan move away from Elland Road could well do Crew the world of good, but with Archie Gray excelling in the first-team fold currently at around the same age as the U21 sensation, funnier things have happened that he could well be the next on the conveyer belt to make a lasting impact soon despite his inexperience.
