Cod Almighty | Diary

Omar's continuing search for a loving home

29 January 2019

The career record of Omar Bogle makes disheartening reading. For Solihull Moors, he made 111 appearances over three years, scoring 62 goals. For Grimsby, over a season and a half, he made 68 appearances, scoring 32 times. In the two years since, he has made 44 appearances, spread over four different clubs. His season-long loan to Birmingham has just been terminated, allowing him to start another loan spell instead – his third since leaving Wigan for Cardiff.

Soon after he signed Bogle, Cardiff manager Neil Warnock said that he he regarded Bogle as a long-term project rather than a player who would immediately improve the team. To be fair, the Bluebirds' promotion to the top flight may have come too quickly for Omar's development. But even so, it is hard not to feel that after failing to progress through the youth systems at West Brom, Birmingham and Celtic, Bogle, at the age of 25, is back in an unofficial equivalent of the academy system for over-age players, part of the Premier League slush pool, a Battersea home for abandoned footballers.

Middle-Aged Diary is struck by a quote from Bogle's manager at Birmingham, Garry Monk. Having not spent pre-season at the club, when he got his chance "he was just so eager to score a goal when he first came in and that probably distracted from the other work that needed to be done". Hard enough for loan players to gel with temporary colleagues. The urge to take short cuts to get themselves noticed must sometimes be irresistible.

We remember Omar. He will always be a Town player, wherever he goes. And an abiding memory of him will be the Pontoon beseeching his name in song minutes after he had missed a penalty that would have won a game against Barnet. Omar, we knew, was a player who needed to feel loved.

That is not about being guaranteed a starting place. Paul Hurst was prepared to rest him now and again, as he did Pádraig Amond, when he felt that would suit his development within the team. I've never read or heard a word from Amond or Bogle criticising Hurst: quite the opposite in Amond's case. It is about giving a potentially brilliant footballer the chance to settle: to get to know his teammates and to get to know the fans, so we all know him as a player and a person. Then he will really develop.

Apparently, Akin Famewo may be recalled by Luton as second-flight Norwich City are interested in signing him. I recommend he has a careful talk with the Canaries to make sure they actually see him as an immediate part of their plans. If he is being signed for Norwich only to then be sent spinning round the country to "foster his development", he should run a mile.