The Jadon Sancho “red flag” coaches noticed after Reece James battle | OneFootball

Chelsea are down to their last pair of wingers, and Jadon Sancho is one of them.

The summer signing has had some nice moments, but has ultimately failed to be as effective as we would hope, especially now we really need him. It’s reminding us of some Kieron Dyer quotes from a year ago about a “red flag” he noticed once.

The former West Ham man remembers watching Sancho as a highly rated youngster:

“He was a wonderkid growing up. He was the talk of everybody in the academies at that time. I was coaching and when I watched Man City he was unstoppable. It was the youth team, so the under-18s and he was incredible. He was probably 17 years old and everyone wanted him – he could have his pick, he’d just dominate every team,” Dyer said in quotes picked up by the Daily Mail.

“They played Chelsea in the FA Youth Cup final and played against Reece James and Reece James got the better of him, which can happen to anyone, but he quit on his team in the Youth Cup final. He just mentally went and I kind of had a red flag against him then and thought that’s a bit weird.

“He’s got the world at his feet and alright, he’s had a bad game but he’s quit on his teammates. You could see the life had gone out of him, he’d stopped tracking back and sort of given up and was basically mentally gone.”

Sancho still has youth team flaws in his game

Jadon Sancho in action against Brighton. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

To be fair, he wouldn’t be the first top winger to lose all hope after being put in the Reece James penitentiary. We just hope that training against him every week is helping Sancho figure out some new avenues and ideas for taking on really dominant full backs.

For all his talent with the ball, Sancho doesn’t have that explosive first step or speed to cover ground to get away from players when he’s tightly marked. To this day we still see him fade out of games in just the way that Dyer explained.