ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

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ClaretTony
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ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by ClaretTony » Tue May 14, 2019 11:07 pm

Another of the young players has left

See link
http://www.uptheclarets.com/ntumba-mass ... es-burnley" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by tim_noone » Tue May 14, 2019 11:11 pm

That's a shame....all his dreams from a young age down the pan.All the best to Him.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by jdrobbo » Tue May 14, 2019 11:14 pm

Best wishes to him. I was really hoping that one day, Hakuna Matata could be sung from the Turf Moor terraces...

It means no worries for the rest of our days...
Scoring two or three, for Burn-ley...
Ntumba Massanka!
Ntumba Massanka, Ntumba Massanka, Ntumba Massanka, Ntumba Massanka....


Best wishes Ntumba!
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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Quicknick » Wed May 15, 2019 5:05 am

It makes me wonder whether his early success was down to his physique? That happens a lot, then other players catch up with age.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Firthy » Wed May 15, 2019 7:50 am

Quicknick wrote:It makes me wonder whether his early success was down to his physique? That happens a lot, then other players catch up with age.
A bit like Crouch then :lol:

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Long Time Lurker » Wed May 15, 2019 11:14 am

I don't think the loans we arranged for him worked in his favour. His first spell at Wrexham wasn't that bad in terms of his return in front of goal, despite playing on the left wing a number of times.

His second spell with Wrexham was very forgettable. The loan to Morecambe before Wrexham and the loans to Dover and York were non events. They offered him little more than cameos and failed to deliver on any promised playing time. After the second spell at Wrexham he really had to kick on and the time that he wasted with Dover and York didn't help matters. He really need to show something special and shine during his time with Molenbeek, without that his chance of a new contract wasn't as good as it could have been.

Seems like a good lad so hopefully this won't be the end of things for him and it will be a case of one door closing and another one opening. Naturally, we wish him every success in the future.

The departure of another striker does add to something of a concern regarding the development squads, because I think Agyei might be very close on his heels.

A recent media release alluded to our hope that Agyei will sign a new contract, on the basis that he would go out on loan or be sold on in the near future. If that is our best "new contract" sales pitch then I suspect he is as good as out of the door and down the road, because it is an awful one.

From the perspective of any player going out on loan or being sold aren't attractive selling points. If those are the most likely outcomes that would stem from a new contract a player is unlikely to sign one. They could get the same playing time ( and probably more ) by signing permanently at another club and without a transfer fee they could also ask for higher wages and a bigger signing on bonus.

In my own books it would constitute a **** poor offer, unless it was accompanied by a sky high wage increase. When we consider the strikers who have already left us, prior to Massanka, we are looking seriously depleted in that area all of a sudden.

Unless we bring in some quality young players we could see ourselves going from a surfeit of young striking talent to a shortfall. Scouring the rumour mill for any indications of incomings, which is not an ideal indicator of what might be in the works, the only player that crops up is Guven Yalcin.

I've only seen a couple of Yalcin video clips, which prove nothing, but he doesn't look that good. His record to date isn't enough to warrant anywhere near the hefty 5m price tag that Besiktas have put on his head at any rate. He did well in the youth teams of a poor league, transferred to the Turkish league with Besiktas and he has been mediocre this season, despite being surrounded by players who are better than those in the other teams of a weak league. His goal and assist return isn't remarkable and it certainly doesn't give any indication that he will be a future Premier League match winner.

David Kownacki's value is in the same range and falling. Without a good loan I suspect that it will fall further and even more quickly. He is a better player than Yalcin, albeit on the back of a couple of extra years development time, but his current value is still way over the top. If we are thinking about spending something like 5m on a young striker I would prefer to see us add more to that figure and bring in a player with recognisable performance credentials. 1m-2m is a speculative punt, 5m on a young and unproven player is a risk that we can't afford.

If there is any truth to the Yalcin rumour, and hopefully there isn't, we could end up losing Agyei to another club on a free and bringing in a relatively unknown and unproven player for the ridiculously excessive price of 5m. A player who doesn't have any experience of the English leagues and doesn't look like he is any better than Agyei.

To me that would be akin to us taking the 5m we got for Vokes, stacking it neatly in the centre circle of Turf Moor and lighting a very expensive bonfire of the vanities.

Adding to the apparent bleakness of this outlook is the impact it could have on the strength of our U23 development squad. Taking Agyei out of the equation and without any new incomings we are down to Harker, Chakwana in the U23's, along with George and Conn-Blarke in the U18's.

We could probably add Richardson to those four, providing that he can step up to a new level and he doesn't get injured competing against teams that are comprised of players who will be many years ahead of him in terms of their physical development.

The top teams can get away with fielding younger players in their U23 squads, who excel in terms of technical ability, despite the reduced physical presence that accompanies their age. Their general playing styles favour technique over physical qualities and they have enough technical players to build a squad around that agenda. When a team has the ability to pass the ball quickly and smoothly they don't encounter the same degree of physical contact. It's the same in any contact sport, skilful exponents get hit less.

Nobody is going to put a hard tackle on you if you don't have the ball or dwell on it. We don't have enough technical players to be able to do that, so our players are exposed to the full impact of the physical aspects of the game. At a younger age, when players are still growing in physical terms, exposing them to that level of physicality is very risky.

Imagine the following scenario.

Sorry mate, it's a severe injury, your promising career is over and you are going to be walking with a limp for the rest of your life. We can't apologise enough, we thought playing you against much older players at a young age would boost your development, but we didn't take the increased risk into full account and you have paid the career ending price for our negligence. It could have been different had we applied our "building slowly and within our means" ethos to your development, but we threw caution to the wind and you have been denied a career in football because of it.

Personally, I don't want to see that scenario played out for any player, let alone one of ours.

It is very early days, but the changes to the development squads has me a little worried. I can stand behind freeing up space to bring in some quality free transfers in the 20-22 age range and clearing the pathway progressions from a surfeit of left wingers, keepers and possibly defenders. However, at this stage the difference between a sound strategy and a cluster **** will be entirely dependent on the cost, quality and quantity of our youth intake and associated signings.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by randomclaret2 » Wed May 15, 2019 11:30 am

Massanka has never been anywhere near good enough to challenge for a first team place.He has struggled for game time at Conference level. I cant understand how he has been at the club for the length of time he has.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by ClaretTony » Wed May 15, 2019 11:38 am

randomclaret2 wrote:Massanka has never been anywhere near good enough to challenge for a first team place.He has struggled for game time at Conference level. I cant understand how he has been at the club for the length of time he has.
He got a good contract because he was showing great potential and there were other clubs making him offers. It was let him go, which at the time would not have been best advised, or offer him a decent deal in terms of contract length.

Ntumba is quick, very quick, and had an eye for goal, certainly in the younger teams. I've seen so little of him in this past two or three years because he's mainly been out on loan. The most I've seen of him was sat in the stand last season when he was at Wrexham and would go to the u23 games at Curzon Ashton.

I have to say I was surprised when he didn't do better in his early loans, but he's not the first and won't be the last where that happens. No idea what he's going to do now but if he can get back on track I'm sure he can still play at a decent non-league level at least.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by houseboy » Wed May 15, 2019 11:57 am

I could be wrong but given our close ties with Stanley we don't seem to send many players there on loan. League one is a reasonable level and they wouldn't need to re-locate.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Long Time Lurker » Wed May 15, 2019 1:13 pm

randomclaret2 wrote:Massanka has never been anywhere near good enough to challenge for a first team place.He has struggled for game time at Conference level. I cant understand how he has been at the club for the length of time he has.
It's the same situation we are possibly dealing with in respect to a new contract for Agyei.

The factors in our favour are that he might like it here and that any club picking him up will have to pay us a small compensation payment.

We can see off the interest from other clubs by giving him a generous contract, but the terms of that contract would have to be weighed against his future value. If we give him an extra 10K a week that would equate to an additional 500K per year over the duration of any new contract.

Over the course of a 5 year contract that would be 2.5m. So we would have question whether he is going to reach that value or not. If the chance of it happening is unlikely then the sensible financial decision would be to let him move on.

The up-shot is that we really should have been negotiating a new contract for Agyei last year if we had any intentions of keeping him on instead of leaving it until this late stage in the proceedings. Failing that we should have probably given him a couple of games on the bench and possibly a cameo to wet his appetite for future first team involvement. Instead of that we shunted Vydra down the pecking order and bent over backwards to give Crouch game time.

The secondary consideration is that faced with the departure of Massanka and possible departure of Agyei we should have been in less of a hurry to release Fowler.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by IanMcL » Wed May 15, 2019 1:15 pm

With loans, continually at low level, release is a natural conclusion. He will find a club.

The Luon King will not be pleased, however...it is a jungle out there!

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Cleveleys_claret » Wed May 15, 2019 6:10 pm

Spoken with him a few times and what a nice young lad he is. A credit to his parents and the club. Hopefully he gets set up somewhere and makes a career for himself at some decent level

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Jakubs Tash » Wed May 15, 2019 10:05 pm

Long Time Lurker wrote:The secondary consideration is that faced with the departure of Massanka and possible departure of Agyei we should have been in less of a hurry to release Fowler.
I'm curious as to how often have you seen Massanka, Fowler and Agyei play?

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by South West Claret. » Wed May 15, 2019 10:21 pm

I saw Massanka play at Torquay for Wrexham a couple of seasons ago and must say that he was bossed most of the game by one of their centre backs so he doesn’t seem to have pushed on an awful lot hence his release I suppose.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Long Time Lurker » Thu May 16, 2019 12:29 am

Jakubs Tash wrote:I'm curious as to how often have you seen Massanka, Fowler and Agyei play?
Massanka, never.
Fowler, a couple of times.
Agyei, quite a bit.

Are you aware of how many players have left our development squads in the last month or so?

Even if I hadn't seen any of them play I would still say that we are looking a little light in the development squads at the moment.

I think it is also reasonable to question the injury risk of asking 16 and 17 year olds to play against much older players.

Yes, it could boost their development, but the difference in physical development between a 16 year old and a 19 or 20 year old is immense. Take it up to 23 or above and it is a chasm.

If the idea is to fill the ranks by moving players up prematurely, instead of bringing players in, the chance of it back firing for one or two of them is a real possibility.

The outcome of what is obviously a major shift in our thinking could be good or bad, depending on the players that we are looking to bring in and how successful we are doing that.

If we are sourcing replacements from the local area I can't see how that will improve us over the long term. Although I'm surprised we aren't in the mix for Ronan Darcy from Bolton. I would have thought a quick car ride would have put him on our radar. Not to mention the fact that our teams have played against him.

On the other hand, if we are looking at the National picture we have staked quite a bit on our ability to attract quality players away from other clubs.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Vegas Claret » Thu May 16, 2019 2:07 am

ClaretTony wrote:Another of the young players has left

See link
http://www.uptheclarets.com/ntumba-mass ... es-burnley" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Tony, I know you watch loads of the games watching the younger levels. Other than McNeil, are we realistically looking at anyone else coming through in the near future ?

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by ClaretTony » Thu May 16, 2019 8:38 am

Vegas Claret wrote:Tony, I know you watch loads of the games watching the younger levels. Other than McNeil, are we realistically looking at anyone else coming through in the near future ?
Hopefully, but it is so difficult to say to be honest because sometimes players don't progress while others do better than you think they might. Back in 2007 I wasn't so sure that Jay Rod would get a contract after two years in the youth team but we saw what happened. Others look good at that level and then don't step it up. There are a few and the names of Lewis Richardson and Ben Woods have been mentioned since getting into the youth team, but these lads are just 16 and about to leave school.

Time will tell, but Dwight began to stand out at under-23 level towards the end of last season and more so early this season. Two years ago, after a year in the youth team, I couldn't have imagined him having this impact so soon.
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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Vegas Claret » Thu May 16, 2019 2:06 pm

ClaretTony wrote:Hopefully, but it is so difficult to say to be honest because sometimes players don't progress while others do better than you think they might. Back in 2007 I wasn't so sure that Jay Rod would get a contract after two years in the youth team but we saw what happened. Others look good at that level and then don't step it up. There are a few and the names of Lewis Richardson and Ben Woods have been mentioned since getting into the youth team, but these lads are just 16 and about to leave school.

Time will tell, but Dwight began to stand out at under-23 level towards the end of last season and more so early this season. Two years ago, after a year in the youth team, I couldn't have imagined him having this impact so soon.
ok cheers. So anyone at the U23 level ? It'll be interesting to see if Aiden O'Neill has improved during his time away for example

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by MACCA » Thu May 16, 2019 2:25 pm

Things can change so much at youth level, 1 year they could look a world beater and destined for very good things, a year later an injury, bad loan move or loss of form could see them not kick on again, and fall seriously out of favour.

Theres also an element of luck, when that door creeps open slightly for whatever reason you need to take your chance and hope someone notices.

I've seen kids at 16 sticking out like a sore thumb thinking he's going to be a very good en for years to come.
By 20 they're part time at a local none league side, or not even playing at all.
It's so tough, all they can do is work every day like its last day to earn a contract, hope to get a stroke of luck a long the way, improve and learn at every opportunity, and if you ever get a chance, do as much as you possibly can to grab it with both hands.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by claretfern » Thu May 16, 2019 2:34 pm

Nothing I would like more than to see Dan Agyei and Aiden O'Neill to stay and fight their way into our match day squad next season, but realistically I doubt it will happen.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by ClaretTony » Thu May 16, 2019 3:02 pm

Vegas Claret wrote:ok cheers. So anyone at the U23 level ? It'll be interesting to see if Aiden O'Neill has improved during his time away for example
I usually get things wrong but the two midfielders Mace Goodridge & Josh Benson have impressed me. Unfortunately Mace suffered a cruciate earlier in the season so has been missing a while.
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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by Steve-Harpers-perm » Thu May 16, 2019 3:48 pm

ClaretTony wrote:I usually get things wrong but the two midfielders Mace Goodridge & Josh Benson have impressed me. Unfortunately Mace suffered a cruciate earlier in the season so has been missing a while.
Heard Goodridge has caught the eye of a few who watch the under 23’s as you say unfortunate he suffered such a bad injury.

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Re: ARTICLE: Ntumba Massanka leaves Burnley

Post by ClaretTony » Thu May 16, 2019 4:38 pm

Steve-Harpers-perm wrote:Heard Goodridge has caught the eye of a few who watch the under 23’s as you say unfortunate he suffered such a bad injury.
He and Benson came in on trial towards end of season and we then signed both of them. They both started the season really well. Hopefully Goodridge will be nearing full fitness when they return for pre-season.
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