Blackpool midfielder Tom Ince, linked with Liverpool, Spurs, Newcastle and Cardiff, has revealed he’s reluctant to step up to the Premier League as he feels it will jeopardise his career.
Ince was very heavily linked with a return to Liverpool earlier in the summer before he very nearly completed a switch to Premier League new boys Cardiff City.
He held off from that move and also appears to have snubbed the apparent interest from Tottenham Hotspur and Everton with his main criticism being that he doesn’t feel he would have got a chance at any of those teams.
“If you look at a lot of clubs in the Premier League, particularly the top five, there are a lot of foreign players. It makes it very hard for young English players to break through,” he told the Daily Mail.
His comments are very difficult to understand particularly in relation to Liverpool and Cardiff City.
Liverpool are the perfect example under Brendan Rodgers that if you perform well enough and are consistent in training, you will get a chance to play in front of a sold out crowd at Anfield.
The perfect examples of that are Raheem Sterling, Jordon Ibe and Jordan Henderson to name just a few of the English youngsters currently in and around the first team at Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in the country.
Liverpool’s reluctance to pay over the odds for him is more than likely a simple sign that Brendan Rodgers doesn’t think he’s a good enough player for what he’s trying to achieve at the club.
Liverpool did try to buy him and they would have given him a chance to develop but considering the price Blackpool wanted at the time and the quality Liverpool have since brought in, they were justified in not paying for him.
It’s also worth noting that Cardiff City made him an offer after Blackpool had accepted what they saw as the right sort of fee for him.
He had the chance to go to a new Premier League side, where he could well have worked his way onto the team sheet during pre-season but turned it down, possibly holding out for a better offer from another side which never materialised.
“I went down to Cardiff to speak to Malky Mackay and what a guy he is. They are a very strong team, they got a fantastic result against Manchester City and it wasn’t to do with any fears that Cardiff might struggle,” he added.
Fair enough that he has family interests up in the North West but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he more than likely would have got a chance to nail down a position across Cardiff’s midfield.
If Ince has Premier League and England ambitions then sooner or later he’s going to have to take that plunge into the top flight. Preferably sooner because at 21-yars-old, he’s not getting old but he’s getting to the point where the top sides will start looking at younger alternatives for players of his type.
What do you make of Ince’s comments? Do they make sense to you?
image: © Matlock-Photo
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